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BROWN HEATH AND 
BLUE BELLS 



j&m 



J ^OWN HEATH AND 
BLUE BELLS 

Being Sketches of Scotland 

WITH OTHER PAPERS 



V 



BY 

WILLIAM WI 




%n& 






MACMILLAN AND COMPANY 

AND LONDON 
I8 95 

All rights reserved 



Copyright, 1895, 
By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



THE LIBRARY 
OF C ONGR ESS 

WASHINGTON 

it. 1 .1 r. " 



Nr.rfoanti Press: 

J. S. Cus%nJ & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 
No? vood, Mass., U.S.A. 



TO 

SElt^afatfj Campbell Wnter 

HONOURED AND LOVED 

COMPANION OF MY LONG JOURNEY 

THROUGH MANY LANDS 

OF SUNSHINE AND OF SHADOW 

OF JOY AND OF GRIEF 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



PKEFACE. 



Tee favour which has been accorded to 
previous sketches by the present toriter has 
encouraged him to believe that he may 
venture to offer to a friendly public these 
additional pages, in a kindred vein. He 
has endeavoured to express the charm of 
lovely and inspiring scenes in Scotland 
and elsewhere, to stimulate the desire for 
travel in storied regions, and to impart 
such hints of beauty as a traveller might 
helpfully remember. He is desirous that 
this volume may be considered in rela- 
tion to its predecessors, — Shakespeare* s 
7 



8 PREFACE. 

England, Gray Days and Gold in England 
and Scotland, and Old Shrines and Ivy, 
— all of which aim to reflect the poetry of 
memorable places and of natural loveli- 
ness, and all of which are offered as simple 
and possibly useful memorials of careless 
wandering and reverent thought. In Gray 
Days and in Old Shrines there are twelve 
chapters on Scotland. A few personal 
tributes are added to the sketches in the 
present volume, with a view to diversify its 
contents, and also vnth the feeling that ad- 
miration for fine spirits may fitly consort 
with remembrance of beautiful scenes. The 
end is a note of poetry, to suit a farewell: 

" The setting sun, and music at the close." 

W. W. 

November 11, 1895. 



CONTENTS. 



SKETCHES OF SCOTLAND. 

PAGE 

I. OVER THE BORDER ... 13 

II. THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES 21 

HI. THE PASS OF GLENCOE ... 32 

IV. THE HOLY ISLE .... 41 

V. FAREWELL TO IONA ... 55 

VI. DUNFERMLINE ABBEY . . .58 

Vn. HAUNTS OF MARY STUART . . 66 

VIII. THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND . 80 

IX. SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY . 90 

X. SCOTTISH MEMORIES ... 94 

OTHER PAPERS. 

XI. TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY . Ill 

XII. STRATFORD GLEANINGS . . 127 

9 



IO 




CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


XIII. 


RELIC 


AND REVERIE 


. 141 


XIV. 


A VALLEY OF PEACE . 


. 152 


XV. 


MOUNTAIN DAYS . 


. 160 


XVI. 


SEASHORE PICTURES 


. 164 


XVII. 


TRIBUTES . . . . 


. 177 




1. 


George Arnold. 






2. 


Fitz-James O'Brien. 






3. 


Charles Dawson Shanly. 






4. 


Rufus Choate. 






5. 


Oliver Wendell Holmes. 






6. 


Jefferson. 




XVIII. 


ON THE VERGE . 


. 233 



Brown Heath and Blue Bells 



Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 
Land of the mountain and the flood. 



On the wild hill 

Let the wild heath-bell flourish still" 

Sir Walter Scott. 



BBOWN HEATH AND 
BLUE BELLS. 



OVER THE BORDER. 

GLASGOW, September8, 1894. —Masses 
of dusky cloud were hanging low over 
Liverpool as I sped away from it, in the 
early morning, on a journey to Scotland. 
The air was cold, the day cheerless, and 
the time seemed long before I came to the 
open country and was gladdened with the 
sight of green fields, the dark foliage of 
many trees, and the golden sheaves of the 
late harvest, — lovely in the glint of sun- 
shine, beneath dim, slate-coloured skies. 
Soon I saw the towers and steeples of Orm- 
skirk and, in its adjacent pastures, many 
bright patches of heather, purple against 
the green. The country there is low and 
flat, and is much intersected with canals. 
Next came Rufford, green but sombre, — 
13 



14 OVER THE BOEDER. 

its dreariness accented by the trembling of 
wind-swept rushes that grow in its cold 
streams. At Croston there was a pleasing 
picture of placid life, in the grouping of 
cattle in the fields, and presently, gazing 
over Houghton, I was aware of distant 
mountains, rising nobly through the mist. 
Spires, chimneys, and copious smoke an- 
nounced busy Blackburn, and soon there- 
after the train flashed into deep and va- 
riegated valleys of Lancashire. Around 
Gisborne the country smiles with bloom, 
the hillside pastures are populous with sleek 
cattle and fleecy sheep, and in the deep 
dales the emerald of the meadow is strik- 
ingly diversified with the darker green of 
those graceful hedge-rows which add so 
much to the charm of that delicious land. 
After Hellifield there were green fields and 
picturesque hedges upon every side, — a 
few walls of stone coming into the picture, 
— and then the open country grew lonely 
and bleak once more, as I gazed on vacant 
moorlands, and saw, with musing eyes, a 
single figure of a traveller, lessening in the 
dim distance, upon a long and solitary 
road. Around Settle and Appleby the 
valleys are of great breadth and splendid 
beauty, and as you look westward from 



OVER THE BORDER. 15 

those scenes of peace and plenty you can 
see the mountains of Cumberland, and your 
thoughts will drift away to the poetic past, 

— to Southey, the blameless and gentle, 
among his books, on Greta's bank, and to 
Wordsworth, austere and simple, wander- 
ing among his native hills, and speaking 
forth their heart, in words of golden ca- 
dence and imperishable truth. At Salkeld 
you would note a tiny river flowing, amid 
flowers, through a plain of sunshine, and, 
far away, the receding, misty, much broken 
outline of the country of the Lakes. There 
was but a faint prospect of storied Carlisle, 

— memorable for its sad associations of the 
crushed rebellion of '45, — and after Car- 
lisle I caught a glimpse of the ocean ; and 
then, with a quick sense of freedom and of 
home, I dashed across the Border and was 
in Scotland. 

It has been my fortune, at various times, 
to see this land in capricious moods of 
weather, but never before in such a blaze 
of warmth and light. There was not a 
cloud in the sky as I rolled through Dum- 
fries, and underneath a golden sun the pas- 
tures all around it glowed and sparkled with 
brilliant emerald sheen, while in the clear, 
cool, autumn breeze the flowering vines and 



1 6 OVER THE BORDER. 

the roses, on many a gray stone cottage, 
seemed to dance with joy. The country 
all along is level, but its diversity makes it 
piquant, and as I heard or saw the familiar 
names, and caught a fleeting glimpse of 
Cluden, I thought of Robert Burns, — whose 
especial region it is, — and could not 
fail to recognise its loveliness and feel its 
charm. There, within the radius of a few 
miles, is comprised the entire story of that 
great poet's life. His first seven years are 
associated with the cottage at Alloway, 
where he was born, January 25, 1759, and 
where he lived, a happy boy, until 1766. 
Then, becoming a labourer for his father, 
he moved to the farm of Mount Oliphant, 
where he remained till he was eighteen. 
In 1777 he accompanied his parents to 
another farm in Ayrshire, called Lochlea. 
His next residence, and one at which he 
wrote many characteristic and beautiful 
poems, notably The Cotter 1 s Saturday 
Night, was at Mossgiel, near Mauchline, 
— his home from 1784 till 1788. In 1786 
he first repaired to Edinburgh, and dur- 
ing about two years he was a brilliant 
figure in that brilliant • capital ; but Edin- 
burgh was an episode. In July, 1788, 
he established his residence at Ellisland, 



OVER THE BORDER. 1 7 

where he wrote, among other immortal 
verses, John Anderson, and that exquisite 
lyric, To Mary in Heaven, and where he 
became an exciseman. In 1791 he settled 
in the neighbouring town of Dumfries, and 
there he died, July 21, 1796, and there he 
was buried. His lifetime comprised only 
thirty-seven years and a half. He never 
left Scotland, and even of his native land 
he saw but little. It is astonishing to con- 
sider how narrow were the physical limits 
of Burns's environment and observation, 
when contrasted with the wide range of his 
experience. Thus recalling familiar facts, 
and with many wandering thoughts upon 
them, I traversed the country of Burns and 
sped through the haunted lands of the 
Border, — leaving, far eastward, St. Mary's 
Loch and the haunts of the Ettrick Shep- 
herd, and far southward Ecclefechan, with 
its memories of Carlyle ; passing Kilmar- 
nock, where the poems of Burns were first 
published ; seeing the distant mountains of 
Arran, beyond the water of Ayr ; thinking 
of Scott, Campbell, Wilson, Motherwell, 
Thomson, Gait, Montgomery, and the many 
minstrels who have shed imperishable glory 
on the land ; and coming at last, in the cold 
lustre of closing day, to Glasgow and rest. 



1 8 OVER THE BORDER. 

The traveller commonly sees Glasgow in 
rain, and then it is dismal ; but on a bright 
day there is not a cheerier city in the king- 
dom. Along the Broomielaw — while the 
Clyde flashes in sunshine, and the graceful 
stone bridges are thronged with vehicles 
and people — the ships and steamers are 
gay with flags, and there is every sign of 
prosperous activity. In Buchanan street 
and other great thoroughfares the teeming 
shop-windows denote a profuse opulence, 
and in the bright faces and lithe move- 
ments of the many pedestrians it is easy to 
read the story of energetic labour, buoyant 
spirits, and a happy and hopeful mind. 
The Lowland Scots seem not to be as vari- 
able as the Highlanders, — who alternate 
forever between impetuous joy and calm 
despondency, the smile and the secret tear, 
— but to possess more of the steadiness and 
uniformity that mark the English. Glas- 
gow is self-centred, the home of contented 
industry, and the peer, for enterprise, of 
any city in the world. Edinburgh pos- 
sesses the eminent advantage of position, 
and is glorious with historic association 
and literary renown; but Glasgow is the 
commercial centre of Scotland ; and to 
look upon her long lines of busy, brilliant 



OVER THE BORDER. 19 

streets, her sumptuous public buildings 
and monuments, and her noble University, 
throned above the lovely pageant of Kelvin 
Grove, and to hear the clatter of hammers 
in the splendid shipyards on the Clyde, is to 
know the restless, puissant, victorious spirit 
of the present day, and to feel that Scot- 
land is the land of deeds as well as dreams. 
Devotion to practical affairs, on the other 
hand, has not made Glasgow mindless of 
national literature and art, — for George 
Square, with its grand column to Scott, 
and its statues of Burns, Campbell, Sir 
John Moore [commemorated in Charles 
Wolfe's immortal lines, "Not a drum was 
heard"], Lord Clyde, Livingston, Watt, 
and Sir Robert Peel, not to speak of the 
massive, symmetrical buildings around it, 
is, architecturally, finer than the vaunted 
Trafalgar Square, of London, and nobler 
in its meaning. The poet Campbell was 
born in Glasgow, but I sought in vain for 
the house of his birth. In those streets he 
may have walked, as was his custom of 
composition, when making the sonorous and 
splendid Pleasures of Hope ; and, thinking 
of the wonderful eloquence and beauty of 
.that poem, it has been a pleasure, passing 
all words, to follow in the footsteps of that 



20 OVER THE BORDER. 

fine genius, and to honour his pure and 
noble memory. There may be other pursuits 
which tend more to broaden the mind and 
strengthen the character, but, if so, I have 
not found them ; and I know not of any 
pursuit so gratifying to the imagination and 
so stimulative to spiritual growth as that 
of musing among haunts that have been 
adorned by genius, endeared by associations 
of heroic or pathetic experience, and digni- 
fied by the splendid force of illustrious ex- 
ample. The present should not be blindly 
undervalued, in comparison with the past ; 
but no man is to be envied who could stand 
unmoved beside the grave of Motherwell, 
in Glasgow's solemn Necropolis, or at the 
stone that covers the dust of Edward 
Irving, — a stone whereon the face of the 
apostle looks with eyes of life from a 
wonderful painted window, — in the gloomy 
crypt of her grim cathedral. By sights like 
those the best virtues of human character 
are sustained and augmented, and by sights 
like those the place of them is made 
precious forever, in a loving and reverent 
remembrance. 



THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 



II. 

THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 

OBAN, Argyllshire, September 12, 1894. 
— In the cold, gray light of dawn, look- 
ing from a high casement in the St. Enoch 
Hotel, I saw the towers and chimneys of 
Glasgow, its ranges of buildings, — lighted 
here and there, but mostly dark, — and its 
long lines of empty street, bleak and cheer- 
less, thinly veiled in mist. To view a great 
centre of population and industry when thus 
quiescent is to be reminded of that pathetic 
weakness which, even at his best, always 
underlies the condition and achievement of 
man. The lesson of humility may be 
learned in many ways, and it is a lesson 
that, sooner or later, all persons must learn. 
The city was still asleep when I made my 
way toward the Clyde, and even upon the 
Broomielaw, usually so populous, I saw but 
few passengers. I was soon embarked and 
gliding down the river — at first slowly, 
amid ships, barges, and steamers, that 



22 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 

seemed to rise like phantoms out of the 
mist ; then more rapidly, as the sharp, brisk 
wind came on to blow, and the river grew 
clearer beneath the gradual approach of the 
sun. Soon I was speeding past those great 
shipyards, the glory of this region, the echo 
of whose busy hammers is heard all round 
the world. Then presently I saw, upon the 
green banks of the Clyde, farmhouses 
couched among trees, cattle in pasture, a 
circle of smiling hills, and far away, beneath 
a gray sky necked with blue, the mountain 
peaks that seem to whisper of Loch Lomond 
and the haunted North. Flights of rooks 
enlivened the air, and in the wake of the 
vessel an eager flock of gulls persistently 
followed, with catlike mewing and shrill 
cries. Overhead the dome of heaven was 
filled with misty, dreamlike sunshine. 
Around flitted many steamers and many a 
tiny craft with brown sails and sturdy hull 
— the fishing boats of Greenock. Past 
Dunoon and Innellan, onward I journeyed, 
past the pretty lighthouse on Toward Point, 
past opulent Rothesay, — its gray houses 
and teeming causeways gloomy in the sub- 
dued light, — and so into the lovely Kyles of 
Bute, and over happy waterways to Loch 
Fyne, rocky Tarbert, the port of Ardrishaig, 



THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 23 

and the Crinan Canal. All along that 
course the scenery is sharply characteristic 
of Scotland ; — a rocky coast, girdled with 
steel-coloured seas ; hills clad with heather ; 
peaceful bays ; stone houses, scattered 
among the rocks ; fishing-boats, with red or 
brown canvas, at anchor, or under sail, or 
slowly drifting with the tide ; fields, su- 
perbly cultivated, alternating with lonely 
pasture and moorland, sprinkled over with 
wandering sheep ; ruined towers, on dark, 
sea-girt crags ; and, over all, the ever-chang- 
ing gladness and gloom of skies that are al- 
ways beautiful, never at rest, and never 
twice the same. Beside the Crinan the 
Highland piper was playing, as he always 
does, and I heard once more the wild slogan 
of the MacGregor and the tearful cadences 
of Bonnie Doon. Once through the Crinan, 
the brief and cheery run to my desired 
haven was northward, along the coast of 
Lorn, with Islay, Jura, and Scarba on the 
west and south, past the ominous precincts 
of Corrivreckin, past St. Columba's Garve- 
loch Isles, past the slate quarries of Balna- 
huay, and so to the Sound of Kerrera and 
the gay and generous port of Oban. 

The Sound of Kerrera, running about 
northeast and southwest, and being about a 



24 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 

mile wide, separates the island of Ken-era 
from the mainland. At the head of it lies 
Oban, in a sheltered bay, backed by a great 
semicircle of wooded crags and heather- 
covered hills. The water front of the town, 
in shape a crescent, is protected by a splen- 
did sea-wall, made of granite, and fretted 
like the battlements of a castle. Two little 
piers jut into the harbour, around which are 
often clustered many black steamboats, 
picturesque with rakish hulls, tapering 
spars, and red funnels, and upon which, at 
almost all times, there is the stir of travel. 
Along the crescent street and up the con- 
tiguous hillside are ranged the many stone 
buildings that constitute the town. Hotels 
are numerous ; lodging-houses abound ; 
the permanent inhabitants number about 
four thousand ; there are gay shops, — in 
one of which I saw a sporran and a mas- 
sive twisted stick once owned by Eob Roy 
MacGregor, together with a bronze clock, 
once the property of Sir Walter Scott, — 
and in all ways the place is pleasant. A 
traveller wishing for seclusion, rest, comfort, 
and variety could nowhere find them in 
more abundance than at Oban. The Mac- 
Brayne steamers, a fleet of thirty-six superb 
vessels, strong, swift, safe, and luxurious, 



THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 25 

ply continually in these waters, and excur- 
sions are feasible from this point to every 
part of Scotland. Meantime, the immedi- 
ate vicinity of the town has charms that 
familiarity will only endear. Each day I 
have walked many miles, and every day I 
have found a new prospect of beauty. A 
few steps from this place will, at any time, 
bring the pilgrim into Highland glens where 
absolute solitude seems throned in perpetual 
sway ; where nothing stirs but, now and 
then, a wandering sheep, or the fragrant 
purple heather just ruffled by the gentle 
wind ; and where the only sound is the lone 
call of the solitary curlew or the musical 
murmur of a hidden brook. Or, should he 
be minded for the water and for the heights 
and moors of Kerrera, a sail of half an hour 
will bring him to that lonely and lovely 
island, upon which, although it is not unin- 
habited, he may stroll for hours, without 
sight of a human face or sign of a human 
abode. Gazing from a headland on the 
west coast of Kerrera, I saw the dark 
mountains of Mull and Morven, clear-cut 
against the heavens, — vast masses of rock 
and verdure, softly relieved by spots of 
light, and calm as if no gale had ever swept 
their summits, nor darkness, tempest, and 



26 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 

danger been ever known. The sky was 
covered with thin, gray clouds, in which 
were rifts of blue, and from behind its 
fleecy mantle the sun flashed here and there 
a gentle radiance. The sea, in all direc- 
tions, was smooth and still, and the thin, 
rocky points that jut into it, and the tiny 
islands scattered upon its surface, seemed 
carved out of ebony. In front were visible 
the lighthouse on the southern arm of Lis- 
more, the lady rock, — a dark speck in 
the glassy water, whence the Campbells res- 
cued Fair Ellen of Lorn, — the ruins of 
Duart Castle, in Mull, and of Ardtornish, 
in Morven, the ancient fortress of the Lord 
of the Isles. In every quarter, far and 
near, the rocky shores, indented by many 
bays, displayed the greatest variety of shape 
and prospect. There is almost always a 
stir in the heavens in this wild region, and 
even while I gazed an arrow of gold darted 
slantwise across the grim Morven hills, 
while above it huge masses of great, steel- 
coloured clouds were curled upward toward 
the zenith, and a single brilliant shaft of 
light fell straight upon the intervening plain 
of the sea. Upon some neighbouring rocks 
rested for a moment a few uneasy gulls. 
In the pastures, below my crag, heedless 



THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 2J 

slieep were feeding and cattle were couched 
at rest. A single sail-boat drifted on the 
deep. A solemn hush seemed brooding 
over the world. Only at times the melan- 
choly jackdaws croaked, from a higher 
cliff ; the air was turned to music by the 
momentary rippling warble of small birds ; 
and, in the deep silence, was faintly audible 
the sleepy buzzing of idle flies. Amid that 
scene of peace I looked toward the more dis- 
tant Hebrides, and almost I could see, upon 
the gloomy, desolate waters, the frowning, 
martial galleys of old Norwegian kings. 

Southwesterly from Oban the road to Kil- 
bride, Ardoran, and Loch Feochan runs 
close to the margin of Kerrera Sound, and 
for a lovely twilight ramble I do not think 
a sweeter place was ever discovered. Al- 
most as soon as you leave the town you 
come upon great boulders clad with heather, 
and your walk is then between sea and 
mountain, along the base of a gigantic cliff, 
— at first slightly masked by a luxuriant 
growth of larch and fir, then naked and 
bold in its colossal strength and rugged 
desolation. In cosey nooks beneath the 
shadow of those tremendous crags are a few 
dwellings, lovely amid flowering lawns, and 
richly decorated with the beautiful green 



25 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 

and crimson of the delicate woodbine, — 
their windows opening on the ever-change- 
ful waters of the Sound. Those waters, 
when last I saw them, were faintly wrinkled 
by the gentle wind of evening, while every 
puff of the breeze brought delicious odour 
from the moorlands and the woods. A lit- 
tle island rose dark in the stream, and mid- 
way between Lorn and Kerrera a bright, 
revolving light flashed from a tiny buoy, 
fast anchored to the rocks. At that point 
there is a ferry to Kerrera, — practicable 
when signalled from the mainland ; and, 
looking across to that island, with its rich, 
green pasture lands, its broad stretches of 
breezy heath, its scattered farmhouses and 
its dark ravines, the stroller is strongly 
tempted to kindle the signal brand or wind 
the horn. The margin of the shore is there 
a confused mass of scrawled rocks, while 
great beetling cliffs overhang the road. To- 
ward the end of the crag I saw the mouth 
of a cavern which — since it has been 
there, unchanged, for countless centuries — 
must often have been the abode of savage 
beasts, or of men scarcely less savage, in 
the earlier ages of unrecorded time. Not 
distant, in the vacant pasture, was a strange, 
uncouth, lichen-covered stone, in shape a 



THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 29 

clumsy sphinx, silently watching over the 
bleak and darkening waste. Along the white 
road, which curves with the curving of the 
shore, there is an ample growth of rushes 
and of thistles, — whereof the down was 
floating here and there, — and, looking up 
the gorges of the hills, I saw much bracken 
and great shining patches of golden gorse. 
Throughout that region there is a wealth of 
flowers, while among the mountain rocks 
are great trees of thick ivy, so that the face 
of every crag is veined with green, and the 
sternest aspect of nature often wears a 
smile. In a little bay, where a boat had 
been beached, I rested long, to dream upon 
that scene of savage grandeur and yet of 
sweet repose. Far out upon the glassy 
water a single sloop was nestled, like a 
bird asleep. The regular, rhythmic beat 
of the oars of a distant skiff floated over 
the silent sea. The faint breeze was scented 
with the fragrance of hay-fields, near at 
hand. A few drowsy bird-notes were 
sprinkled on the air; and slowly, over the 
sacred stillness, the soft gray light which 
follows the sunset waned and faded, until 
all was dark. 

This place, indeed, is one of strange and 
incommunicable beauty, and words can but 



30 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 

faintly suggest its charm. Looking north- 
ward from my windows in the home-like 
Royal Hotel of Oban, I see the pretty bay of 
this picturesque city, placid now, and smooth 
as a mirror, and on it a few little steam- 
yachts and fishing-boats at anchor. Many 
gulls are resting on its glossy, steel-like sur- 
face, or circling, with shrill clamour, in the 
empurpled, golden air. Immediately before 
me lies the ample garden of a neighbouring 
dwelling, — its walks fringed with marigolds 
and late roses, its green lawns shaded by 
tremulous willow trees, the rowan, and the 
ash, a still fountain in its centre, and in the 
ample, dry basin a child at play. Beyond 
the garden rises the embattled sea-wall of 
the town. Away to the right stretches a 
long line of dwellings, gray against the 
autumn-tinted gseen of Dunolly Mount. 
Through the middle distance extends the 
bleak, green, treeless, broken and vacant 
point of Kerrera, upon which, near its north- 
ern extremity, rises a simple monument, to 
commemorate that admirable public bene- 
factor, David Hutcheson, whose manage- 
ment of steam navigation opened to general 
access the western highlands of Scotland. 
On the left are the buildings and gardens of 
the Caledonian Railway, and a little west- 



THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 3 1 

ward of them rises the wooded height of 
Pulpit Hill, — commemorating the revered 
character and life of David Macrae, — from 
which you may have one of the loveliest 
views of landscape and water that are any- 
where to be found. Far off, in the north 
and west, ridge beyond ridge, extend the 
dark and frowning mountains of Morven 
and of Mull. From the streets adjacent 
comes a noise of traffic, the click of hoofs, 
the rattle of wheels, and the occasional din 
of bells. Squads of tourists hasten to and 
fro along the causeway. Flocks of black- 
faced sheep and herds of shaggy, wide- 
horned cattle appear suddenly, from time to 
time, coming around the curves of the har- 
bour road, and, spurred by shepherds and by 
vigilant collie dogs, tramp away and vanish. 
The sun, as it sinks behind the western 
mountain, casts slanting rays of golden 
light across the peaceful bay, from beneath 
thick clouds of lilac and of steel. The 
sky immediately above is of the clearest, 
deepest blue, and high in heaven the little 
starlings are flying in flocks, while a single 
sea-swallow, poised for an instant, makes a 
picture of wild freedom and happy sover- 
eign power, serene in the sapphire arch. 



32 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 



III. 

THE PASS OP GLENCOE. 

GLENCOE HOTEL, Pass of Glencoe, 
September 14, 1894. — As I sailed out 
of Oban Bay the sea was perfectly smooth, 
the air was cool and sweet, and, looking 
eastward, I could see rifts of blue, shining 
through a gray and rainy sky. The course 
was northward, past the ivy-clad ruins of 
Dunolly Castle, and past the mouth of 
Loch Etive, with Lismore, the Great Gar- 
den, on the west, and the mountains of 
Benderloch and Ardchattan on the east, 
while in front gradually opened a gay and 
blooming prospect of the Airds of Appin. 
It is a lovely country, and whether seen in 
sunshine or in shadow it fires the imagi- 
nation and satisfies the heart. On Lis- 
more the fields were green and fair, and 
upon the rocks that fringe the shore glowed 
many patches of brilliant moss, which pres- 
ently were reflected in the still and shining 
water ; and I saw little clefts along the coast, 



THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 23 

wherein boats had been beached, and, in- 
land, occasional tall trees, and many stone 
cottages nestled in sheltered nooks. The 
whole scene was encompassed with hills, 
and constantly, as we sped onward, — leav- 
ing a wake of broadening rollers, over which 
the greedy seagulls circled and screamed, — 
that wrinkled landscape would change in 
form and colour, till the senses were bewil- 
dered with its variety and its pomp. Far 
to the eastward were visible the gigantic 
double peaks of Ben Cruachan, and not 
alone those proud, imperial heights, but 
the spires and ridges of all the mountain 
chains around Glen Creran, Glen Etive, 
Glen Kinglas, and Glen Strae ; while in the 
west, defined with wonderful sharpness of 
outline, rose the frowning bastions of Mor- 
ven, and, more southerly, the black, pre- 
cipitous mountains of Mull. As the boat 
drew near to Appin, — whence sprung the 
royal Stuarts, — the sea, before it, was a 
mirror of burnished steel, while behind, 
underneath a misty sun, it was one broad 
plain of rippling silver. There is a fine bay 
at Appin, a sturdy sea-wall and a pretty 
beach, and I could see the sleek, contented 
cattle, feeding in their pastures, the slop- 
ing hillsides above them, thickly wooded 



34 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 

with the hardy Scotch fir, and the great 
highlands beyond, red and gleaming with 
heather, in its perfection of bloom. The 
land was of various colours, — tawny, yel- 
low, red, and dark green, — and the water 
was so placid that the unbroken reflection 
of the adjacent mountains could be dis- 
tinctly seen in its depths, while each lonely 
bird that drifted on the surface left a rip- 
ple in its wake. Sometimes near the land, 
sometimes distant from it, the rapid steamer 
made her steadfast way, while ever, as she 
advanced among the engirdling hills, new 
vistas of beauty kept opening and chang- 
ing, till perception was confused with the 
novel vicissitude of mysterious prospect. 
The sun, about meridian, hung in the 
heavens, like a silver shield. Mists began 
to thicken and to droop, but through them 
I saw the riven sides of crags, black and 
barren from long scarcity of rain, and 
towering behind them the dark mass of 
Ben Vair, where it frowns upon the mouth 
of Loch Leven. The landing was at Bal- 
lachulish pier, and from that point onward 
I drove toward the famous Pass of Glencoe. 
No doubt it is a beaten track ; but every 
track is beaten, in these days of systematic 
touring and all-conquering steam, and, as 



THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 35 

to the results of observation, everything is 
dependent on the eyes that see. For a 
time the course was by the margin of the 
loch and eastward along the base of the 
great mountains that border it, following 
a road through the village of Ballachulish, 
where there are slate quarries of great ex- 
tent, and where I saw a fine slate-stone 
monument, to commemorate the Queen's 
Jubilee year, — inscribed with the date, Sep- 
tember, 21, 1887. In that region the fields 
are divided with walls of slate, and at one 
point the carriage rolls beneath a tall and 
splendid arch of slate-stones, fashioned in 
a buttress to the impending hill, and cre- 
ating a singular effect of rugged grace. A 
small church appears, proclaiming itself by 
no less than six crosses, and on the broad 
reaches of bleak hillside the traveller's gaze 
wanders curiously over groups of moun- 
tain sheep, — the tiny, graceful beasts of 
the Highlands. It is one effect of solemn 
emotion that it causes you to observe trifles 
with acute perception, and I think no per- 
son of a sensitive temperament could ap- 
proach that little village of Glencoe without 
such feelings of awe as would impress the 
scene upon his memory forever. The place 
of the massacre lies near the entrance to 



36 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 

the glen, and it is marked by a simple 
granite shaft. Scarce anything remains of 
the shielings of the Mclan tribe of the clan 
Macdonald, — the wretched victims of that 
hideous crime, — but you are told of the 
spot where the house of the chieftain 
stood, and you see the ruins of a few huts 
that once were the homes of his unfortu- 
nate people. Time, that heals all wounds 
and tries to hide all scars, has gently cov- 
ered every vestige of the inhuman butchery 
with verdure and bloom, and that scene of 
horror is now a peaceful hamlet, in which 
you may hear the sound of the church-bell 
and the laughter of children at their play. 
All the same, there is a shadow on the 
place that nothing can remove, — a sense 
of unspeakable terror and dread. More 
than two centuries have passed since that 
fearful winter night (February 13, 1692), 
when the soldiers of king William so basely 
murdered the trusting Highlanders whose 
bread they had eaten and in whose homes 
they had slept ; but, whether from its phys- 
ical peculiarities or from the mysterious 
power of association, the Pass of Glencoe 
is forever invested with pathos and gloom. 
All around are huge mountains, black and 
barren, or clad with green turf and bracken, 



THE PASS OF GLENCOE. yj 

and mostly veined with deep, stony fissures, 
which are the beds of rapid rivulets. Low 
in the gorge you see the rocky bed of the 
river Cona, here and there diversified with 
tiny waterfalls, and you hear the noise of 
water bickering over the stones, the lonely 
caw of rooks, and the bleating of distant 
sheep. Beside that river the long road, 
like a ribbon of silver, ascending and de- 
scending, winds away, with the windings 
of the glen. Far in the Pass I found a 
refuge, and it was my privilege to spend 
a night amid those scenes of desolation, — 
among the dreariest beneath the eye of 
heaven. In that way only can the full 
meaning of such a place be absorbed into 
the mind, — the lonely magnificence of stu- 
pendous natural objects, and that copious, 
cruel, terrible vitality of nature which is so 
completely indifferent to the life of man. 

Thus I reflected, sitting alone, among the 
rocks in that wilderness, and listening, in 
the gloaming, to the voice of the hidden 
mountain streams. Above me towered the 
gigantic black crags of Bidean-nam-Bian, 
its huge bastions banked like some great 
organ, whereon, smitten by all .the tem- 
pests round about the world, might sound, 
through everlasting time, the solemn music 



38 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 

of eternity. Not distant I saw the black 
waters of Loch Triochatan, and far above, 
in the mountain side, the dark and seem- 
ingly inaccessible arch of Ossian's cave, — 
for that poet was born beside the Cona, and 
the spell of his weird genius rests on all 
those rocks and waters. As the night 
deepened, a faint moonlight, as from 
another world, — for the moon was hid- 
den behind the mountain peaks, — drifted 
into the Pass, suffusing its grim battle- 
ments and dusky depths with an unearthly 
glow ; and almost I could see dim shapes of 
phantoms, the murdered children of the 
glen, gliding toward me, across the riven 
rocks. Later, and just before the dawn, 
I looked, forth again, and saw where great 
clouds of mist were drifting across the 
mountain sides, while yet the peaks rose 
bare and grim above, and looking upward 
I beheld, through a rift in the driving 
clouds, the golden orb of the morning star. 
I had seen Glencoe under a blaze of sun- 
shine. I was now to see it under the tran- 
sient shadow of a storm. Nothing can 
exceed in grandeur the effect of the Scot- 
tish mountains when they are draped in 
mist. All the imagery of Ossian is justi- 
fied, and more than justified, by the por- 



THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 39 

tentous shapes and the immeasurable 
magnitude that the vapours impart to 
the hills. Sometimes those mists are 
piled upon each other till they reach 
far into the heavens. Sometimes they drift 
in vast masses, low down upon the crags. 
Sometimes they impend and float in strange 
processions, — thin, long streamers, moving 
slowly across the mountain side. But, what- 
ever shape they take, and however they 
come, they are beautiful ; and very grate- 
ful I was to the little birds whose twitter- 
ing in the eaves of the cottage awakened 
me before the dawn, that I might enjoy 
that spectacle of majesty and wild romance. 
I took a boat and rowed for a while upon 
the lake, — musing in that delightful soli- 
tude, beyond the reach of man to despoil 
or to mar, however darkened with the 
shadow of his crime and sin. I saw the 
remains of the old bridle path, along which 
some of the Macdonalds escaped from the 
murderous hands of Campbell of Glen 
Lyon, and I was told that many ruined 
houses, once tiny cots of stone and thatch, 
the homes of the clan Macdonald of other 
days, may still be seen, scattered in places 
among the hills. Scotland's glens were far 
more populous two hundred years ago than 



40 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 

they are now, for then the land was owned 
by the clans, and each clan obeyed its 
chieftain and possessed the product of its 
toil ; but after the rising for Prince Charles, 
in '45, and the disaster of Culloden, those 
lands were rended and parcelled among the 
conquerors, and gradually the old inhabi- 
tants have been banished to the south or 
into foreign countries. The clannish feel- 
ing, the native language, and the primitive 
customs of the Highlander have not, indeed, 
been extinguished ; but they survive only 
in remote and isolated places — such as 
Morven, Iona, Mull, and Colonsay, and 
such as the weird Pass of Glencoe. Far 
distant be the day when a language so 
sweetly musical and so poetically expres- 
sive shall cease to sound, when customs so 
picturesque shall be discarded, and when a 
home life so generous and romantic shall 
exist no more. 



THE HOLY ISLE. 41 



IV. 

THE HOLY ISLE. 

IONA, September 24, 1894. — The sky was 
cloudy and the wind was cold when I 
sailed out of Oban, bound for Staffa and 
Iona, but the sea was smooth, and soon 
the sun struggled through the clouds and 
streaked the liquid plain with lace-like 
rays of silver. On Mull the mountain 
shapes were dark and stately, and the 
green hills of Morven — less impressive, 
however, than when they are half hid- 
den by streamers of drifting mist — stood 
forth, bold and splendid, in the gray light 
of an autumn morning. The tide was 
gently plashing on the lady rock as the 
boat swept by it, and frowning in the dis- 
tance, rose the grim ruin of Duart Castle, 
— objects eloquent of the cruel Maclean and 
of his baffled crime, long since commemo- 
rated alike in poem and in play. In the 
north I saw again Ardtornish, and I thought 
of Scott and of the Lord of the Isles. Over 



42 THE HOLY ISLE. 

that region, also, as over Loch Katrine, 
Loch Lomond, and the land of the Mac- 
Gregor, the great Minstrel of Scotland has 
cast the imperishable glamour of his genius 
and his renown. Upon both shores of the 
spacious Sound of Mull I saw the many 
ruined castles that Scott has immortalised, 

— strongholds of ancient chieftains, long 
since dead and gone, — and soon I looked 
on modest Salen and haughty Tobermory, 
sheltered secure in their peaceful bays. A 
thin silver haze had gathered on the moun- 
tains, when we put to sea from Tobermory, 
but through it I had a grand vision of lofty 
Ardnamurchan, — the cape of the Great 
Seas, the extreme western point of Britain, 

— and far away I could discern the seques- 
tered islands of Coll and Tiree, lying like 
long clouds on the western horizon. At 
Staff a the wind was hushed, the sun shone 
brightly over that mysterious island, — 
bosomed on the ocean like a great ship dis- 
mantled and grounded, — and, save for a 
deep, regular swell that surged through the 
channels of rock upon its riven coast, the 
sea was silent, a giant, breathing low in his 
heavy sleep. The boatmen of Gometra 
were there, with the great red lifeboat, and 
the landing was easily made. Some of us, 



THE HOLY ISLE. 43 

indeed, were rowed into Fingal's Cave, so 
that we could gaze upward, in the centre 
of its superb cathedral aisle, and hear, from 
its reverberant arches, groined by the hand 
of God, the echo of the musical surges that 
solemnly break upon its base. Staff a might, 
perhaps, be adequately described by an ob- 
server who should dwell there for a time 
without human companionship, — because 
in solitude the spirit of the place would 
stand revealed and would become an inspi- 
ration and a guide. Even when marred by 
the chatter and levity of a commonplace 
throng of sightseers, the scene has still a 
wonderful power upon the heart. It was 
very glorious on that day, — the solemn 
cave almost flooded with brilliant sunshine, 
the jagged walls covered with gleaming sea- 
grass and limpets, and the dark basaltic 
columns basking in light and heat. To be 
there alone, to listen to the breakers, to see 
the endless succession of on-coming waves, 
— each sinister with cruel desire and awful 
with silent menace, — and to hear the wind 
among the rocks, would be to feel the divine 
might, the weird mystery, and the nameless 
terror of the caverned isle, and, perhaps, to 
translate them into words. 

In the Highlands and among the Hebrides 



44 TH E HOLY ISLE. 

the traveller is influenced more by natural 
objects and their atmosphere than by his- 
toric association. Throughout those moun- 
tain glens and upon those lonely islands 
and those bleak and wandering waters man 
has, indeed, been active, from an immemo- 
rial time, alike in the ravages of war and 
the pursuits of peace ; but, in contrast with 
those solitary hills and that gloomy ocean, 
man and all his works dwindle to insignifi- 
cance and seem no more than the dying 
echo of a wave that is spent. With that 
thought I stood upon the summit of the 
crags of Staffa and gazed out upon the Heb- 
rides, sleeping in a sea of gold. Never have 
the shores of Scotland been more lovely to 
human eyes than they were that day, — for 
never was the sunlight more resplendent 
upon them, or the overarching sky more 
cloudless, or the girdling sea more brilliant 
or more calm. Northward the Tresnish 
Islands lay like gems of jet in the spar- 
kling water. Eastward green Inchkenneth 
smiled upon sable TJlva and the jagged, 
ruddy coast of Mull. "Westward, a dark 
speck in the wild Atlantic, was dimly visible 
the rock of Skerry vore. And in the south 
rose the single mountain of Iona, — the 
Holy Isle, the land of my desire and the 



THE HOLY ISLE. 45 

chief goal of my pilgrimage ; at once 
the most romantic, the most pastoral, and 
the most illustrious of all the shrines of 
Scotland. 

It has been said of Iona that " its inter- 
est lies altogether in human memories." 
Those memories certainly hallow it, and 
they invest it with a peculiar solemnity ; 
but in itself, by reason of its position and 
its physical attributes, Iona exercises upon 
the senses and the imagination the excep- 
tional spell of an august and melancholy 
charm, and therefore it possesses an in- 
terest essentially its own. You can go no- 
where in that island without seeing, every 
hour, a new picture, and every picture 
will be superb. In the early morning the 
scene is usually sombre ; but as the sun 
mounts into the clear heavens, burning 
away the mist, all the region begins to glow 
with glistening verdure and with a sheen of 
many-coloured waters, and to vibrate with 
the vital energy of a cool, crystal air, which 
is delicious with varied fragrance and with 
the music of many birds. The surrounding 
sea is a mirror, sometimes purple, some- 
times blue or green, and alike upon the sea 
and the land the passing clouds cast many 
a gray shadow as they drift along. In little 



46 - THE HOLY ISLE. 

gardens, here and there, the red roses are 
still in bloom, the flaming marigolds lift 
their bright heads, and the broad shields of 
the clematis fleck the cottage walls with 
purple splashes, — darkly beautiful against 
green leaves and gray stone. Fields of 
clover, flooded with sunshine, tremble in 
the breeze. The wallflowers and thin 
grasses upon the ruined church and nun- 
nery stir faintly and seem to make the still- 
ness stiller and the solitude more deep. 
Far off, in austere Mull, the rays of the 
sun, falling from behind a great cloud, 
light up the red, barren rocks, and make 
them, for a moment, great masses of ruby 
and diamond. Every minute the sea and 
the sky are changed, while silence seems to 
grow denser and holier with the deepening 
of the day. There is a low murmur of 
waves upon the shore. A stray jackdaw 
caws lazily, floating around the grim cathe- 
dral parapet, — so lovely in its decay. 
There is a flutter of small birds, — the 
friendly little starling being the chief of 
them, — and this occasionally breaks into 
a song or a tremulous trill ; while far away 
sounds the call of the curlew, low and 
mournful in the solemn stillness. If you 
pause in your moorland ramble, the air is 



THE HOLY ISLE. 47 

so peaceful that you may hear the hum of 
a passing bee or the buzzing of flies. High 
up, among the rocks of Dun-I, the black 
woolly cattle and the little fleecy sheep gaze 
at you with attentive eyes, and make no 
motion of fear or flight. Now and then 
you come upon a small cottage, sequestered 
in seaside cove or rural glen or moor, and 
from every chimney a thin spire of white 
and blue smoke rises almost straight toward 
the placid sky. Out upon the Sound of 
Iona a single boat is drifting with the tide, 
while around the point of the Torran Rocks, 
— so terrible in tempest, but now so full 
of peace, — a tiny steam yacht makes her 
graceful course, like a phantom floating 
across the mirror of a dream. In the broad 
fields, lately mown and golden now with 
stubble, the harvest has mostly been stacked 
in yellow sheaves, and sometimes, over the 
distance, — in an air so clear that faint 
sounds may be heard for more than a mile, 
— you can catch the singing of the reapers, 
the sound of laughter, and even that of 
spoken words. So speeds the happy day : 
and now, a little later, the sun sinks slowly 
in the west, beyond the wide and desolate 
Atlantic plain. Eastward the crags of Mull 
grow dark, while high above them, girdling 



48 THE HOLY ISLE. 

the summit of Ben More, vast masses of 
bronze cloud float dreamily in space. The 
Strait of Iona is a rill of burnished silver. 
Westward in the heavens the gold of sun- 
set is veined with long rifts of lilac and 
steel-blue. The shadows deepen. The 
wide and lonesome moors — in daytime 
green with lush grass and purple with 
abundant heather — grow dimmer and 
more forlorn. The whisper of the sea 
rises, upon a faint breeze of night, and 
over the darkening solitude the jackdaws, 
in a sable multitude, make wing for the 
sombre tower of the ruined church which 
is their home. 

At a late hour of the night I went 
to St. Oran's chapel, among the graves 
of the Scottish kings, and to the cathedral 
ruins, — which then were partly in shadow 
and partly illumined by the faint light of 
a gibbous moon. The winds were hushed. 
The sea was like glass. The sky was 
covered with thin clouds. of silver fleece, 
through which the moonlight struggled, 
commingling with the faint, doubtful radi- 
ance of a few uncertain stars. Upon the 
grassy plain that surrounds the ancient 
church the spectral crosses — of St. Mar- 
tin, St. Matthew, and St. John, each cast- 



THE HOLY ISLE. 49 

ing a long, weird shadow — glimmered like 
ghosts. Within the ruins the awful silence 
was broken only by a low sighing of the air 
through crevices of the mouldering walls, 
and by the fluttering of birds, in the dark, 
hollow heights of the great tower, — jack- 
daws, disturbed in their midnight slumber 
by the unusual foot of man. Framed in 
darkness the lovely eastern casement was 
a wonder of light, — each mullion clearly 
defined, and every lancet and rose made 
visible in a perfection of form scarce 
dreamed of until then. I stood long upon 
the place of the altar, with those strange, 
rude effigies of kings and warriors and 
priests around me, and the stone pillar of 
St. Columba close by, and I listened to the 
faint murmur of the sea ; and in the chill 
air of midnight the rustling of the grass 
upon those broken arches seemed the whis- 
per of beings from another world. Amid 
such scenes as these the human spirit is 
purified and exalted, — because amid such 
scenes as these the best of our present life 
may be enjoyed, while our humble and rev- 
erent hope of the life to come is strength- 
ened and confirmed. 

On a Sunday morning I sailed, in a small 
boat, from Iona across to Mull. Neither 



50 THE HOLY ISLE. 

wind nor tide would serve us, and we had 
to make a long reach toward the ocean, so 
that I saw, very close at hand, and in their 
guise of holiday, those dangerous Torran 
Kocks, — well remembered as I had seen 
them in the terrors of the tempest, but 
peaceful and smiling now, in the warm 
light of the morning sun and amid the calm 
of the sleeping sea. Over the waters all 
around, and often near to our boat, the 
seagulls swooped and mewed, and the cor- 
morants skimmed, while scores of black 
divers made their pretty curves and van- 
ished in the deep. Seals here and there 
came up to view, and upon the low rocks 
of the coast some pairs of hoodie-crows, 
the ill-omened corbies of the moorland, sat 
close together, in sinister counsel, planning 
mischief, and doubtless intent upon its 
speedy accomplishment, — for no bird is 
more sagacious or more wicked. The land- 
ing upon Mull was accomplished by difficult 
scrambling over a mass of jagged rocks, and 
presently I came to a neat road, that winds 
away across the great island, eastward and 
north, toward the villages of Kintra and 
Bunessan. Near to the shore there is a 
lonely little graveyard, in which are a few 
mounds and rude sepulchral stones, and I 



THE HOLY ISLE. 5 I 

was told that the bodies there buried were 
such as had been intended for interment in 
Iona, but had been stayed by storms, — for, 
in tempestuous weather, the Sound becomes 
impassable and may remain so for many 
days at a time. Many such accidental 
bournes of sepulchre exist in the Western 
Islands of Scotland, — their presence deep- 
ening the melancholy bleakness of solitary 
places, and darkly bespeaking the inexor- 
able power of the savage sea. The walk 
was through pasture lands for about three 
miles, with scarcely a house in sight; but 
many cattle and sheep were visible, peace- 
fully grazing, and often I passed huge 
piles of peat, the only fuel that is used in 
the Ross of Mull. Peat bogs abound in 
that country, and some that I saw were at 
least twelve feet deep. The lower strata is 
said to be the best, and a fire of peats, as I 
had occasion to know, is both comfortable 
and fragrant. I made my way into Mull, 
as far as the Parish of Icolmkill extends, its 
eastern boundary being marked by a tiny 
brook, the burnie of Scottish song, which 
ripples beneath the road, not far eastward 
of Loch Porlie. There are, in that parish, 
which reaches from Kintra to Erraid and 
from the Sound of Iona to Creich, about 



52 THE HOLY ISLE. 

four hundred and twenty inhabitants, in- 
clusive of the keepers of the lighthouse on 
Dim Heartach, — otherwise called the Rock 
of St. John, — which is distant from Iona 
about twelve miles southwest, in the lone 
Atlantic, and on the still more remote and 
desolate . Skerry vore. Those lighthouse- 
keepers have homes upon Erraid Island, 
among the Torran Rocks, and each man 
may pass two weeks at home, after six 
weeks at the Light, when the weather per- 
mits a relief-boat to bring him away from 
his ocean solitude. Lonelier vigils are not 
kept, anywhere in the world, than on those 
remote, storm-beaten coasts of the Hebrides. 
Nowhere have I found more primitive man- 
ners than in Mull. The inhabitants speak 
the Gselic language, and in that language 
divine service was performed at Creich, — 
the Minister of Iona, Rev. Archibald Mac- 
millan, delivering a sermon, marked by 
intense feeling, winning sweetness, and per- 
fect simplicity. A schoolroom serves for a 
church in that wild place, — its walls of 
discoloured plaster being embellished with 
maps, — and the worshippers sit upon 
wooden benches. The manner of all things 
there was very simple, and I have not seen 
in any house of worship a more profoundly 



THE HOLY ISLE. 53 

reverent spirit. The building is isolated, and 
over miles of encircling pasture the autumn 
sun shone brightly and the sable rooks, 
seemingly so wise and always so busy, took 
their melancholy flight. In the home of 
the . schoolmaster, Duncan Cameron, we 
were entertained with Highland cordiality, 
and so parting we sailed away. 

The sky, half blue and half filled with 
clouds of white and slate, smiled over us as 
we sped, the sea was smooth, and, save for 
the lapping of the waves against our boat, 
I heard no sound. When half way across 
the Strait of Iona the voyager may see weird 
Staffa in one direction, the savage Torran 
Rocks in another, and the Morven heights 
just peeping over Mull. A wreath of mist 
was on Ben More, but the peak of that 
mountain stood clearly forth above it, and, 
scattered here and there among the glisten- 
ing red rocks of Mull, the little cottages 
seemed more than ever the abodes of pre- 
destinate and unassailable peace. Before 
us lay the fields of fair Iona, golden and 
green in a blaze of sunshine. Around us 
the sea was gray, or violet, or resplendent 
with great streaks of purple. Clear against 
the western sky rose the cairn of Iona's 
single mountain of Dun-I, and more near we 



54 THE HOLY ISLE. 

saw the ruins of the nunnery and the cathe- 
dral, beautiful in proportion, lovely in col- 
our, and venerable with the memories of 
eight hundred years. The great cathedral 
tower, visible from almost every point in 
this region, dominates every picture ; and 
no effect of colour could be finer than its 
commingling of red and gray, in the warm 
light of the autumnal sun, with weeds and 
flowers and long grass in its crevices, and 
rooks circling about its summit. There it 
stands, in desolate magnificence, the gaunt 
survivor of a glorious past, the lonely em- 
bodiment of a spirit of devotion that is 
dead and gone, and forever departed out 
of this world. Men build no more as they 
built when love was the soul of religion and 
self-sacrifice was the law of life. Such a 
temple as Iona Cathedral or Fountains 
Abbey will never be reared again. It is the 
age of reason now, and not of feeling. I 
lingered in the Port of the Coracle and 
stood upon the rock where Columba landed, 
and I wandered, in the twilight, upon the 
White Beach of the Monks. Not a vestige 
remains of the saint or of his labours. But 
the place is beautiful beyond words, and his 
august spirit has hallowed it forever. 



FAREWELL TO IONA. 55 



V. 

FAREWELL TO IONA. 

Oban, September 27, 189U. 

I. 

SHRINED among their crystal seas- 
Thus I saw the Hebrides: 

All the land with verdure dight ; 
All the heavens flushed with light ; 

Purple jewels 'neath the tide ; 
Hill and meadow glorified ; 

Beasts at ease and birds in air ; 
Life and beauty everywhere ! 

Shrined amid their crystal seas — 
Thus I saw the Hebrides. 

n. 

Fading in the sunset smile — 
Thus I left the Holy Isle ; 

Saw it slowly fade away, 
Through the mist of parting day ; 



56 FAREWELL TO IONA. 

Saw its ruins, grim and old, 
And its bastions, bathed in gold, 

Rifted crag and snowy beach, 

Where the seagulls swoop and screech, 

Vanish, and the shadows fall, 
To the lonely curlew's call. 

Fading in the sunset smile — 
Thus I left the Holy Isle. 



As Columba, old and ill, 
Mounted on the sacred hill, 

Raising hands of faith and prayer, 
Breathed his benediction there, — 

Stricken with its solemn grace, — 
Thus my spirit blessed the place : 

O'er it while the ages range, 

Time be blind and work no change ! 

On its plenty be increase ! 
On its homes perpetual peace ! 

While around its lonely shore 
Wild winds rave and breakers roar, 



FAREWELL TO IONA. 57 

Round its blazing hearths be blent 
Virtue, comfort, and content ! 

On its beauty, passing all, 

Ne"er may blight nor shadow fall ! 

Ne'er may vandal foot intrude 
On its sacred solitude ! 

May its ancient fame remain 
Glorious, and without a stain ; 

And the hope that ne'er departs, 
Live within its loving hearts ! 



Slowly fades the sunset light, 
Slowly round me falls the night : 

Gone the Isle, and distant far 
All its loves and glories are : 

Yet forever, in my mind, 

Still will sigh the wand' ring wind, 

And the music of the seas, 
Mid the lonely Hebrides. 



58 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 



VI. 

DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 

EDINBURGH, October 25, 1894.— The 
Castle looms above us, in rugged 
splendour, as we glide along at the base 
of its gigantic foundation crag, and speed 
away into the green fields. It is autumn 
and there has been frost, but the landscape 
still smiles, and beneath a delicate blue sky, 
rifted with many clouds of white and pink, 
the harvest fields are golden, and the lazy 
sheep stray in green pastures, and all the 
earth is glad. In one field innumerable 
seagulls are busy among the stubble ; in 
another there is a multitude of rooks, 
portly, sleek, black, and preternaturally 
industrious. Upon every side are hedge- 
rows and groups of trees, and often we 
see long lines of cone-shaped, yellow hay- 
stacks and sometimes red-roofed cottages 
with russet-tinted barns, and the scene is 
lovely with colour and with the genial sug- 
gestion of rural peace and comfort. The 



DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 59 

sinuous, domelike shapes of the Corstor- 
phine and the Pentland Hills are stately 
and mysterious, within vast bastions and 
parapets of cloud and through a thin veil of 
gauzy mist. Upon the broad Forth, when 
we traverse the great bridge, there is a 
sheen of gold, as the westering sun gleams 
over its surface of wrinkled steel, and, far 
below us, across that wide expanse of bur- 
nished beauty, the little steamboats make 
their easy way, each leaving a ripple of sil- 
ver in its wake. Every time I have seen 
the Forth, at that point, it has presented a 
gorgeous picture. This time it was more 
than ever magnificent, because of impend- 
ing storm. A great cloud-rack was coming 
from the north, and underneath a confused 
interblending of light and shadow — streaks 
of blue and rolling masses of bronze and 
black — both land and water took on a 
glory of changing hues for which there is 
no descriptive word, and a gloomy gran- 
deur which is the perfect garment of 
mystery and omen. At picturesque Inver- 
keithing we darted suddenly into the heart 
of the tempest, and nothing more was seen 
till we came to clear skies again, and to fair 
Dunfermline, serene upon her royal hill. 
It was the Abbey that I wished to see, 



60 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 

and a short walk, through streets of gray 
stone houses and little shops, soon brought 
me to its stately portal, — one of the most 
imposing types of the recessed Norman 
door to be found in this kingdom. The 
church rears itself in the centre of a large 
burial-place, and, being set upon a ridge of 
land which slopes both ways, its massive, 
square tower is visible far off. In the fret- 
work at the top of that tower appear the 
words King Robert the Bruce, the letters 
being of great size and being placed as 
supports for the coping. That portion of 
the fabric is modern, for in the days of 
Knox the old church, — erected by Mal- 
colm and Margaret, in 1075, — was demol- 
ished, excepting its nave, and the stones of 
it, which had been hallowed by nearly five 
hundred years of dedication to sacred wor- 
ship, were thereupon, from time to time, 
carried away and built into other struct- 
ures, wherever stones might happen to be 
wanted. The ancient nave remains ; and 
noble it is, with its ponderous round pil- 
lars, its lofty casements, its gaunt trifo- 
rium, and its unmistakable character of 
perfect simplicity and truth. Two of the 
pillars are decorated with arrowhead carv- 
ing, ingeniously devised to create the opti- 



DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 6l 

cal delusion that they are narrower at the 
base than at the top. In a chapel near the 
north porch are two stone coffins, one open 
and one closed and sealed, — the latter con- 
taining the bones of two sons of Malcolm, 
one of whom was slain, in company with 
his father, at the battle of Alnwick, and the 
other of whom brought to his mother, 
Queen Margaret, tidings of her bereave- 
ment. The new part of the Abbey is built 
immediately over the ruin of the old one, 
so that the ancient nave affords an avenue 
to the modern chancel ; yet even in that 
modern structure the spell of antiquity 
asserts its power, ■ — for immediately under 
the pulpit is the tomb of king Robert, the 
Bruce, and beneath the pews toward the 
north end of the transept rest stone coffins 
containing the bones of eleven of the earlier 
monarchs of Scotland. Malcolm and Mar- 
garet were buried side by side, near the 
altar of the former church, but their tomb, 
now a ruin, though carefully covered and 
enclosed, is directly east of the present 
building and outside of it. The bones of 
the sainted Margaret no longer rest in that 
sepulchre, having been long ago conveyed 
away and buried in Spain. Bruce died at 
Cardross in 1329, and was buried in front 



62 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 

of the altar in Dunfermline church. In 
1818 his coffin, of oak and lead, was discov- 
ered and opened, his skeleton was found 
entire, and an examination of it revealed 
the fact that the ribs had been severed 
with a saw, so that his heart could be re- 
moved, — that brave and pious heart, which 
he had willed should be placed in the 
Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, but which, 
after many vicissitudes, was buried in 
Melrose Abbey. The bones of Bruce, it is 
said, are preserved with pitch. The tomb 
was marked, in 1889, with a superb brass, 
representing the full-length figure of the 
monarch, panoplied for war, set in a slab 
of Egyptian porphyry. As to the stone 
coffins of the other kings, the sexton of the 
Abbey told me he had several times exam- 
ined them with great care, but could find 
no mark by which the identity of the bur- 
ied persons could be established. The 
stones that originally covered those re- 
mains of old royalty appear to have been 
demolished. Queen Anne's elaborate mon- 
ument to the architect William Schaw 
[1702] is at the west end of the north 
aisle of the older church, but in a place so 
dark that I could only discern that it is 
florid and artificial. Foley's beautiful and 



DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 63 

touching sculpture, commemorative of Gen- 
eral Robert Bruce, brother to Augusta 
Bruce, who became the wife of the beloved 
Dean Stanley, stands in the south transept, 
— a veiled woman, supporting the head of 
the dead man, and bending over his recum- 
bent figure, in the mute agony of grief. 
The contrast of death and life in those fig- 
ures, together with the truth of anatomy 
and the flexibility and grace of drapery, 
make that work a marvel, and I remember 
it with the sculptures by Chantrey, and 
Watts, at Lichfield, and with the angel at 
the font, in the cathedral at Inverness. In 
the churchyard at Dunfermline Abbey they 
show the grave of the mother of the heroic 
Wallace, still marked, as he marked it, with 
a thorn tree, the successor to many thorns 
that have there bloomed and withered. 
There is no name in Scottish history so 
encrusted with fable as that of William 
Wallace, but in this tradition of him it is 
good to maintain an absolute trust. 

A few fragments of gray stone, weather- 
beaten and beautiful with age, are all that 
remain of the old palace, where 

" The king sat in Dunfermline town, 
Drinking the blood-red wine." 



64 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 

Those fragments and the land adjacent 
to them are enclosed, and a small sign, over 
the gate, announces the Palace Ruins. At 
my approach a custodian emerged from 
a watch-box and opened the gate. The 
ground is overgrown with grass and young 
trees, and the place is neatly kept. The 
palace must have been extensive, but only 
one wall of it is now extant. John Knox 
laid upon Dunfermline the hand of destruc- 
tion, and church and monastery and palace 
were tumbled into a shapeless mass of ruin. 
The wall that remains is sustained by a 
strong foundation and by massive but- 
tresses, and it is pierced for many windows, 
all notable for beauty of design and fine 
proportion. One window, formerly an oriel, 
now simply an arch, is especially interest- 
ing, as that of the room in which was born 
prince Charles, afterward Charles the First, 
king of England. The spacious fireplace 
of that room is in the old wall, and about it 
you may see traces of the carving with 
which it was adorned. Five of the windows 
on the lower story are, obviously, those of a 
banquet hall, — now a broad walk, beneath 
the sky. Adjacent to the walk, at its east 
end, may be seen the remains of a spacious 
chamber, beneath which is a low room, 



DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 6$ 

with a groined roof, supported by short 
columns. That, probably, was a wine- 
cellar, although the antiquarian preference 
is to call it a chapel. A circuitous flight of 
earthen steps conducts the visitor from the 
terrace above the ruin to a walk along the 
base of the old wall, and from that walk it 
is easy to see how splendid Dunfermline 
Palace must once have been. The position 
is just upon the brink of a wide ravine, — 
now considerably wooded upon both its 
slopes, — through the dim depth of which 
flows a rapid stream, sending up continu- 
ally that sweetest of music, the sound of 
running water, gently impeded in its inces- 
sant course. From the windows of prince 
Charles's room the gazer would look down 
into that deep and verdurous valley, and 
across it to fertile fields and emerald past- 
ures, stretching far away to the northern 
bank of the Forth. It was easy, in imagi- 
nation, to repeople those vacant spaces, and 
to see once more the royal Stuarts, in all 
their glorv, little dreaming of the awful fate 
which was to close their dynasty and ulti- 
mately extinguish their race. 



66 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 



VII. 

HAUNTS OF MART STUART. 

STIRLING, November 9, 1894. — The 
most fascinating figure in the history 
of Scotland is Mary Stuart. Her nature 
must have combined imagination, taste, 
sensibility, intellectual power, deep feeling, 
and a certain joyous, passionate abandon- 
ment akin to recklessness, and those attri- 
butes, manifestly, were incarnated in a 
person of voluptuous and most alluring 
beauty. Even at the distance of centuries 
from her death, her name arouses the live- 
liest emotions, and for her sake many a 
place in England and Scotland is now a 
shrine of sorrowful pilgrimage and pious 
reverence. All readers know her miserable 
story. Some persons believe the best of 
her, and some believe the worst ; but, irre- 
spective of all belief, the world is conscious 
of her strange allurement, her incessant, 
abiding charm. It had been my fortune to 
see many places with which Mary Stuart 



HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 6j 

was associated, — among them her rooms in 
Holyrood, where Rizzio was murdered ; 
her rooms in Edinburgh Castle, where her 
son James was born; the ruins of her 
castle of Craigmillar, where once she was 
so happy ; Carberry Hill, where she sur- 
rendered to her insurgent nobles ; the re- 
mains of her Loch Leven prison ; the field 
of Langside, — now thickly covered with 
dwellings, where, May 13, 1568, she lost 
her crown ; the mount of Cathcart, from 
which she watched the Langside battle ; the 
chapel in Notre Dame, in Paris, where she 
was married to Francis of France ; the 
cathedral at Peterborough, where her man- 
gled body was first buried ; and the stately 
tomb in Westminster, where, finally, her 
ashes were laid to rest. I was now to stand 
in the stone chamber in which, December 7, 
1542, she was born. It is a roofless ruin, — 
deserted, save for the footstep of an occa- 
sional pilgrim, and silent, save for the 
moaning of the wind ; but no spot could be 
more eloquent. Linlithgow, I was told, is 
seldom visited, — and that is the more re- 
markable, considering how easily it can be 
reached. It is a gray and red town, rearing 
itself beside a blue lake, a little south of 
the Forth, about twenty miles west from 



68 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 

Edinburgh, on the road to Falkirk. The 
place itself is mostly modern and conven- 
tional, but the Palace of Linlithgow is one 
of the noblest ruins in Europe, and even if 
it were devoid of historic associations it 
would richly repay study, as a representa- 
tive dwelling of a remote and picturesque 
age. It was accidentally burnt, in 1745- 
46, and since then it has been a cluster of 
walls ; yet, even so, much of the original 
building remains, and observation, with a 
little help of fancy, can readily reconstruct 
its splendours, and animate its desolation 
with the teeming, sumptuous life of Long 
Ago. Standing in the courtyard of that 
gray and bleak ruin, you look up to the in- 
ner window of the room in which Mary 
was born, and you may discern, above it, 
the royal symbols, still perfect, that were 
placed there by her son, years afterward, 
in memory of his most unfortunate mother. 
In the room itself the remains of what was 
once a splendid fireplace will attract your 
admiration, and you will see, in about the 
centre of the floor, a stone that is marked 
with nine circular indentations, possibly 
designed for Mary's juvenile game of nine- 
pins — as, indeed, the guide does not scruple 
to intimate. The royal infant [for Mary 



HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 69 

became a queen when she was only six 
days old] , passed but two years at Linlith- 
gow, before she was removed to Stirling 
Castle. Next to the queen's room is a 
chamber that was occupied, in succession, 
by three of her ancestors, James the Third, 
James the Fourth, and her father, James 
the Fifth, and in one corner of it is still 
visible the hiding-place wherein, beneath a 
trapdoor, James the Third concealed him- 
self from the lords who would have slain 
him, — while his queen, Margaret of Den- 
mark, sat by, in seeming tranquillity, and 
by her perfect composure averted the sus- 
picion of the insurgents and threw them off 
the scent. Those rooms, in the old Stuart 
days, were splendidly decorated. Indeed, 
the whole palace was magnificent, — so that 
Mary of Guise, when James the Fifth 
brought her home, said that she had never 
seen a more princely dwelling. It is a grand 
structure, even in its decay. At the time 
of the Stuarts it was so admirable that it 
was deemed a good model for even the 
splendid castle of Heidelberg, whereof, at 
the present day, the ruin is one of the 
most gorgeous spectacles in Europe. At 
the northeast angle of Linlithgow still stand 
the bastions erected by Edward the First. 



JO HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 

At the northwest you may ascend a noble 
tower, that still is eloquent of poor Margaret 
Tudor, who there first heard of the death 
of her errant husband, James the Fourth, 
at the fatal battle of Flodden. The wind 
was moaning drearily around it, as I sat in 
the little stone chamber at its summit, and 
the dull November sky was darkly brood- 
ing overhead ; but far away upon the 
grassy hillsides and over the wimpling 
waters of the sullen lake the sunbeams 
streamed downward from behind masses of 
cloud, and seemed to typify the life that 
still springs triumphant out of death, and 
the hope that ever rises from despair. 
Nearly four centuries have passed since the 
bereaved Margaret sorrowed and wept in 
that room ; but all her sorrows and equally 
all her pleasures are at rest, and around 
those barren and crumbling stones, which 
are her cold memorial, surge and beat the 
waves of a new existence, which is all 
power, enterprise, confidence, and joy. 
They show to you, just within the gate of 
the palace, a dark, low, groined, gloomy 
chamber, four stone walls and a floor of bare 
earth now, in which the Regent Murray 
died, — shot down, like a dog, in a street 
of Linlithgow, by Hamilton, of Bothwell- 



HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 71 

haugh, January 20, 1570. The place of the 
murder is marked by a medallion bust of 
Murray, affixed to the County Court build- 
ing, not distant from the palace gates. 
More near to the palace, of which indeed it 
was once a part, stands the church of St. 
Michael, now undergoing such a renovation 
as will make it almost a new building, but 
not to be overlooked by any pilgrim ; for 
there it was that James the Fourth, when 
on his way to Flodden, received the mys- 
terious warning of his impending fate — 
a portent which, passing into literature, 
through Scott's martial and splendid poetic 
tale of Marmion, has become one of the 
most precious memories of romantic art : — 

" But lighter than the whirlwind's blast 
He vanished from our eyes, 
Like sunbeam on the billow cast, 
That glances but, and dies." 

Under a gloomy sky and in the face of a 
bitterly cold wind I traversed the streets of 
ancient Stirling and struggled up the steep 
ascent to the castle. It is a grim place, 
and its bleak grandeur was heightened by 
the sombre menace of impending storm. 
Not a ray of sunshine was anywhere visi- 
ble, and in the north a great, shapeless 



72 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 

mass of black cloud covered and concealed 
everything. The fortitude of the citadel is 
extraordinary. It stands upon a vast crag, 
and its defences include a dry moat, a flexi- 
ble drawbridge, a double portcullis, several 
gates, several batteries, and, encircling all, 
walls of tremendous thickness and strength. 
Almost as soon as you pass the first gate 
your attention is directed to a low, dungeon- 
like cell, formerly a guardroom, which 
was named and described by Scott, in the 
Lady of the Lake, as the prison of Roderick 
Dhu. It is now a store-room. Looking 
upward, you behold, toward the west, a 
building curiously decorated with uncouth 
images, which was the royal palace in the 
Stuart days, and adjacent to it a square 
tower wherein once dwelt Queen Mary, 
and wherein her son James was instructed 
and trained by that famous Scottish poet, 
scholar, and historian, George Buchanan. 
All the windows of that royal building are 
grated with iron bars — a precaution taken 
for the security of James, when he was a 
child. Access to that building is usually 
denied, since it is occupied as a residence 
by the officers of the garrison. Opposite to 
it, on the north side of an irregular quad- 
rangle, a building that once was a royal 



HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. JT> 

chapel is now used as a show-place for 
armour and weapons, — after the fashion of 
the White Tower, in London, and of the 
superb banquet-hall in Edinburgh Castle, 
but not comparable with either. Beneath 
this a narrow arch affords access to an 
enclosure called the Douglas Garden, and 
thence you enter the room in which the 
eighth Earl Douglas was cruelly and treach- 
erously murdered, by James the Second, in 
1452. They show you a little ante-chamber, 
through which the body of the murdered 
man was dragged, and also the window 
through which it was thrown. A beautiful 
bit of stained glass, exhibiting the arms of 
Douglas, now fills that casement, — placed 
there by Queen Victoria. The Douglas, it 
is said, was buried where he thus fell ; in 
which case his grave would be in the middle 
of the pathway, where every passenger 
must trample above his bones. From the 
Douglas Garden you mount by easy steps 
to the northern and western ramparts of 
the castle, whence you may gaze down 
upon the links of the winding Eorth, the 
battle-field of old Stirling Bridge (1297), 
and the ever-memorable field of Bannock- 
burn, — marked now by a tall flagstaff, set 
in the Bore Stone, in which, on that great 



74 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 

day, was placed the standard of Bruce. At 
one point on the western rampart is a look- 
out port, which is said to have been made 
for the use of Mary Stuart, and with her 
the castle has many associations, — as in- 
deed it has with all the earlier Stuarts. On 
the northeast corner of the Palace still 
stands a rude, quaint statue of James the 
Fifth, — King of the Commons, as once 
they called him, — in his roving character 
of the Goodman of Ballengeich. In the 
queen's room, after Flodden, Margaret 
Tudor, James's widow, gave birth to Prince 
Alexander, Duke of Ross, who died in 
infancy and was buried in storied Cam- 
buskeimeth. In the magnificent Grayfriars, 
— now, by a strange and deplorable per- 
versity of taste, divided into two misshapen 
parts, called the East and West Churches, 
— Mary Stuart, a babe in arms, and crying 
continually throughout the ceremonial, was 
crowned the Scottish Queen [September 
9, 1543]. In Stirling she passed a part of 
her childhood, — most of the years 1545- 
46-47, — till in 1547 she was taken thence 
to Inchmahome, in the Lake of Monteith ; 
and to Stirling she returned, after the 
French episode of her life was ended, in 
1561 ; and it was at Stirling, in the room of 



HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 75 

David Rizzio, that she was secretly wedded 
to her cousin, Parnley, in 1565 — a mar- 
riage the most disastrous that ever was 
made by any great person. To Stirling 
she came again, after the birth of her son 
James, and it was there the boy was christ- 
ened, amid a splendid pomp of festivity, 
December 19, 1566. That ceremonial the 
jealous and infuriated father refused to 
attend: the house, called Willie Bell's 
Lodging, in which that day he is said to 
have kept his carousal, is still extant, in 
Broad Street, a short walk from the castle 
gate. After the frightful tragedy of the 
Kirk of Field Mary visited Stirling for the 
last time, to see her child, and on April 24, 
1567, she left it forever. It is easy to 
understand that no person who has studied 
the annals of Scotland, no person to whom 
the strange and melancholy history of Mary 
Stuart appeals with anything like force, 
can look upon Stirling Castle without emo- 
tion too deep for words. All the elements 
of romance and of tragedy adorn the place 
and hallow it. 

From Stirling the traveller goes to Cam- 
buskenneth Abbey, being rowed across the 
Forth in a little boat. Nothing remains 
of the Abbey except a single tower — part 



j6 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 

of which has been restored — and a few 
fragments of broken masonry. Many of 
the foundation stones, however, are in their 
places, and the outline of the building can 
be traced in the soil. It was in shape a 
cross, having, apparently, two towers at its 
west end. A graceful pinnacle, terminating 
in a sculptured flame, surmounts, at the 
northwest corner, the tower that is still 
extant, and in that tower there are two 
spacious chambers, besides a dark base- 
ment-room, — all devoted to the preserva- 
tion of pieces of the carved stonework of the 
old Abbey. The nave, the aisles, and the 
chancel are now an open field, but upon 
the spot where once stood the altar stands 
now a handsome tomb, enclosed within an 
iron rail, to mark the sepulchre of James 
the Third, and of Margaret of Denmark — 
to whom Scotland owes the Orkneys and 
the Shetlands, which were her dower. 
In Cambuskenneth those sovereigns were 
buried, four hundred years ago, and there, 
upon careful exploration, in 1864, the sad 
relics of them were discovered. The pres- 
ent tomb was placed by the Queen of Eng- 
land. Upon the top is a sculptured cross ; 
upon the west end are carved the arms of 
Scotland, quartered with those of Den- 



HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. JJ 

mark ; upon the south side it is written 
that : "In this place, near to the high altar 
of the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, were de- 
posited the remains of James the Third, 
King of Scotland, who died the 11th of 
June, 1488, and of his Queen, the Princess 
Margaret of Denmark"; and finally the 
north side records that: "This restoration 
of the tomb of her ancestors was executed 
by command of H. M. Queen Victoria, a.d. 
1865." The surviving tower of this once 
.splendid church, more Norman than Gothic, 
is remarkably massive. A hundred steps 
will conduct you to its summit, from which 
the prospect is ample and uncommonly 
beautiful. In the north rises the Abbey 
Craig, with its gaunt monument, a mod- 
ern structure, commemorative of William 
Wallace, and, more distant, the dark, 
rugged shapes of the Grampian Hills. In 
the west and south your gaze wanders 
over the gray houses of Stirling, and rests 
upon its sombre castle, frowning from 
the crested rock of kings. Eastward and 
southward fields and farms stretch away 
into the hazy distance, until the bounds 
of earth and sky are merged and lost in 
one blue line. Close at hand are the 
wonderful, silvery, serpentine links of the 



78 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 

Forth, — that broad, bright, teeming river, 
sparkling, for miles and miles, through a 
wide plain of brilliant verdure, dotted with 
villages, and everywhere hallowed with the 
sense of contentment and peace. No place 
has witnessed more abundant or more san- 
guinary strife : no place is now more tran- 
quil and sweet. In the neighbourhood of 
the Abbey ruin there is a cluster of cot- 
tages, nestled among gardens, but the land 
around the ruin is mostly open field, and 
it is girdled, upon all but one side, by a 
curvature of the Forth. In its prosperous 
days the Abbey, with its monastic build- 
ings and its gardens, must have occupied 
the whole of the territory thus enclosed 
by the river, and perhaps a wall upon its 
landward side protected it there. The 
history of Scotland centres in that ruin. 
"Wallace, and after him Bruce, knew 
Cambuskenneth. The first Alexander and 
William the Lion were buried in it. Next 
to Iona, it was, for the earlier Scottish 
kings and nobles, the chief of shrines. 
And in the terrible warfare and carnage 
through which the stately civilisation of 
Scotland has been developed all the region 
round about it has been drenched with 
heroic blood. 



HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 79 

It had been a day of alternate gloom 
and glory. At one time, as I descended 
from the castle, a vast bank of gray and 
yellow fog drifted over the landscape, and 
through it the Abbey Craig loomed dim 
and ghostly, a black, shapeless hulk. Soon 
a shaft of sunshine smote upon its centre, 
and I beheld what seemed a gigantic white 
angel hovering in the mist. A moment 
more, and this had changed into a great 
pillar of silver, which presently dissolved, 
and then the colossal Wallace Tower stood 
forth, baseless, framed in clouds, a vision 
floating in the heavens. Next came a 
mighty wind, and even while I gazed 
every wreath of cloud was swept away, 
and castle and city and plain, the distant 
peaks of Ben Lomond, Ben Lecli, and Ben 
Venue, and the whole Grampian ridge, 
blazed forth under stainless blue and in 
the glory of the setting sun. There is no 
fairer scene in all the world, nor one more 
richly freighted with memories that stir 
the heart. 



8o THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 



VIII. 

THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 

ST. ANDREWS, September 18, 1895.— 
As I speed through the green and yel- 
low autumn fields, northward and west out 
of Edinburgh, the huge Pentland Hills show 
black in the morning mist, and the sombre 
Corstorphine looms stately and splendid be- 
neath a rainy sky. There are portents of 
storm, but in the capricious clime of Scot- 
land the smile is close to the tear, and I 
am rejoiced rather than surprised, when 
rolling across the Forth Bridge, to see rifts 
of blue in the sullen clouds and a glint of 
golden sunshine on the smooth, dark river 
far below. Upon the beaches of Burnt- 
island the tide is flowing softly, in long, 
thin, foamless waves that idly lapse and 
seem to make no sound. Southward, look- 
ing across the steel-gray water of the Forth, 
I can discern the receding spires and domes 
of beautiful Edinburgh, with Arthur's Seat 
and the Pentland mass, like watchful lions, 



THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 8 1 

couched confronting in the mist. Soon 1 
flit through gray Kirkcaldy, — a name grimly 
famous in Scottish history, — gazing, as I 
pass, on its quaint church among the graves, 
and marking, far at sea, the lighthouse on 
the lonely Isle of May. At Dysart the 
train leaves the coast and trends north- 
ward through meadows that are fresh with 
verdure, and among graceful hills, crowned 
with green copses, and now beginning to 
glitter in the brilliant autumn sun. No part 
of Scotland is more tastefully cultivated and 
adorned than this section of Fife, where 
every prospect eloquently denotes the gra- 
cious result of many years of industry and 
thrift. Stately villas peep forth from the 
woods. Low, red-roofed cottages, the sim- 
ple and cosey abodes of comfort, nestle in 
the vales. Lazy cattle, many-coloured and 
picturesque, stray in the pastures, or couch 
beside the dark, cool, shining streams. Not 
even in finished Warwickshire can the wan- 
derer find gentler pictures of rural peace 
than may be seen in Eife. At Ladybank 
the traveller is almost within the shadow 
of that singular mountain, the obvious in- 
spiration of the name, which, with its sym- 
metrical double peaks, suggests a virgin 
bosom bared to the benediction of the sky. 



82 THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 

Next I dash past opulent Cupar, — illus- 
trious as the birthplace of that characteris- 
tic national poet, Sir David Lindsay, 1490- 
1557, — and presently, from busy Leuchars, 
where myriads of screaming sea-birds fill 
the grassy moors, I look across the bay to 
the sand dunes and the crags of St. An- 
drews, the gray tower of its ancient and 
famous church, and the desolate pinnacles 
of its ruined Cathedral, once so beautiful, 
always renowned, and still august and rev- 
erend among the shrines of Scotland. 

St. Andrews of the present is a small 
gray town, built mostly of stone, perched 
on a promontory overlooking the northern 
ocean, and devoted in part to learning and 
in part to sport. Its four principal streets, 
like the ribs of an outspread fan, converge 
to a point at the ruined Castle and Cathe- 
dral on its eastern shore, and those streets 
are interlaced with lateral causeways and 
diversified with occasional squares. Upon 
one side of the promontory the surges of 
a wild sea break, in stormy music, on beach 
and crag. Upon the other, rising from the 
bed of a tiny river, a moorland shelves away 
to a circle of low hills. Northward, across 
the broad waste of sparkling water, rises 
the shore of Forfarshire, stretching from 



THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 83 

Buddon Ness toward Montrose, while far 
to the eastward gleams the lighthouse on 
the lonely Bell Rock, long famous in legend 
and poetry as the place of the Inchcape 
bell. The living sights of the town are the 
Colleges and the Golf Links. It is not, how- 
ever, for living sights that the pilgrim seeks 
St. Andrews, but for the associations that 
cluster round its ruins, and for the thoughts 
that are prompted by remembrance of its 
past. St. Andrews is to Scotland what 
Canterbury is to England, — the emblem of 
a vast civic conflict and a national tragedy, 
— and as you stand in the roofless nave of 
its once glorious, now desolate, Cathedral, 
and see the moss and the trembling wild 
flowers on its broken walls, and hear the 
moan of the ocean wind through its lofty 
mullioned casements and around its crum- 
bling turrets, so softly restful to your eyes, 
you forget the present, and remember only 
the princes and prelates of a bygone age, 
the zealots who fought and the martyrs who 
perished, and all the misery and all the pa- 
thos of the ancient battle — long over and 
done with now — for liberty of conscience 
and of faith. St. Andrews was the centre 
of that contention, and it is replete with its 
relics. In the dark and dreadful pit called 



84 THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 

the Bottle Dungeon, still extant and ma- 
lignly perfect, in the northwest sea-tower 
of its Castle, George Wishart was held a 
captive, until burned, for heresy, in front of 
the Castle gates, while Cardinal Beaton and 
his companions of the Church . looked on, 
merciless, at a martyr's death. The old 
guide, who now lowers his lighted candle 
into that foul abyss, and prattles of its hor- 
rors, might make a tamer theme grotesque ; 
but this is wholly tragic, and not even droll 
volubility can dissipate its gloom. Into that 
grisly and loathsome cavern Kirkcaldy of 
Grange, Norman Leslie and their fierce con- 
federates cast the body of Beaton, and 
lapped it with salt, after they had murdered 
him in his bedroom of the Castle, and dan- 
gled his corse from the battlements. The 
windows of the Cardinal's rooms in the 
great front tower still look upon the town. 
From that Castle, when taken by the French, 
John Knox was carried away into captivity 
in the galleys. Not much remains of the 
grim old structure now, but, perched as it 
was upon a precipitous crag, jutting into 
the sea, with a broad, deep moat around 
its landward sides, it must have been a cit- 
adel of prodigious fortitude : it is formid- 
able even in its ruin. The waves were 



THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 85 

breaking angrily at its base, and all the 
sea, for many miles around, was white with 
wreaths of foam, as I looked down upon it 
from the windy height of the grim Tower 
of St. Regulus, and in the offing a single 
ship, with her sails close-reefed, was heavily 
tossing on the surge. Such a spectacle may 
often have been seen, from its battlements, 
by Edward Baliol, or Queen Mary Stuart, 
or the Regent Murray. It was long the 
abode of princes before it became the home 
of priests. Beaton, when he trod its ram- 
parts, looked forth to many a baleful blaze 
of the fagots kindled by his cruelty for the 
burning of men whose faith was not as his. 
Knox gazed from it upon the Cathedral that 
he hated, and that he was destined to de- 
stroy. It was in the ancient Town Church 
of St. Andrews, — a part of which is still 
extant, and all of which is most charac- 
teristic and interesting as an ecclesiastical 
building, — that Knox preached, June 5, 
1559, the renowned sermon against Idolatry 
which caused the destruction of the Cathe- 
dral, and of the beautiful churches of the 
Black and Gray Friars ; and the pulpit in 
which he preached it is still preserved, in 
the museum of St. Salvator's College. In 
the Town Church, also, on the east wall 



86 THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 

of the south transept, stands the monumental 
tomb of James Sharp, Archbishop of St. 
Andrews, the Becket of Scottish history, 
— not as noble a character, and not the rep- 
resentative of as great a principle ; yet, 
in the tremendous drama of the Scotch 
Reformation, the most conspicuous roy- 
alist figure and the most illustrious victim. 
Within that tomb, whereon, in white and 
black marble, sculpture and allegory com- 
bine to pay homage to a saint, the mangled 
body of the slaughtered Archbishop was 
buried, and there, for many a year, the 
pensive gazer will review his strange story 
and consider his ghastly fate ; but the dead 
priest's relics have long been gone. In 1725 
the tomb was rifled, and whether those ashes 
were elsewhere sepulchred, or were cast to 
the winds of heaven, no man knows. 

A pleasant drive of about three miles 
westward from St. Andrews brought me 
to Magus Moor, the scene of the Arch- 
bishop's murder. The road winds through 
fertile farm lands and past the long walls 
of a parklike estate, and presently, near to 
the little village of Strathkinness, it ascends 
a hill and penetrates a thick wood. More 
than two centuries have passed since the 
fatal May morning when the doomed prel- 



THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 87 

ate, whose sin was ambition and whose 
offence was an alleged breach of faith, was 
there dragged from his carriage and bar- 
barously killed before his daughter's eyes. 
The country-side was a bleak moorland 
then, but over it then, as now, the wind 
blew softly and birds were on the wing. 
The grove that now covers this hillside, 
though dense and wild, is comparatively 
young. The scene of the murder is deep 
in its heart, and the visitor must leave his 
carriage and make his way to it on foot. 
A long winding path, thickly strewn with 
needles of the fir, leads to the spot, and on 
it, closely embowered so as to be almost 
hidden by foliage, stands a grim pyramid 
of gray stones, fronted with an oblong tab- 
let whereon, in a few Latin words, is writ- 
ten the miserable story of crime and grief: 
" Hunc prope locum Jacobus Sharp, Arch- 
iepiscopus, Sancti Andrae, a salvis inimicis 
adstante filia sua et deprecante trucidatus 
est. A.D. MDCLXXIX." Nine assassins 
fell upon the old man — he was in his sixty- 
first year — and cruelly and horribly slew 
him. He had gone to the Court of Charles 
the Second, a Presbyterian, commissioned 
to represent his church ; he had returned an 
Episcopalian and Primate of all Scotland, 



88 THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 

and for that he must die. So was accom- 
plished, despite the frantic supplications of 
a daughter for her aged father's life, one 
of the foulest murders in all the long annals 
of crime, and one more of the many dark 
and hideous deeds that earnest men have 
done for the cause of religion and in the 
name of Him who was the Prince of Peace. 
A principal hand in that conscientious in- 
iquity was John Balfour, of Kinloch, called 
Burley, whom Scott has so marvellously 
depicted in Old Mortality. I had but lately 
seen, in the Whitehall exhibition at London, 
the tattered, discoloured Bible that once was 
Balfour's property, and surely his idol. I 
was now standing at the scene of his crown- 
ing sacrifice and disaster. From the horror 
and the anguish of that hideous day it may 
well be true that he never recovered. But 
he also sleeps ; and even the memory of his 
wickedness has grown dim with age. In 
that sequestered place, as I turned away 
from it, the faint light of an autumn sun, 
which there would be dim even at noonday, 
was fast fading into night ; and where once 
the air resounded with cries of rage, an- 
guish, and entreaty, all was now silent, save 
for a sorrowful moaning of the wind and a 
dreary rustling of the leaves. 



THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 89 

In England the most imposing ecclesias- 
tical ruin is that of Fountain's Abbey, which 
broods upon its desolate yet majestic gran- 
deur far in the green depths of the stately 
park of the Marquis of Ripon. In Scotland 
it is the Cathedral of St. Andrews, around 
which has grown up a modern cemetery, 
but of which the gaunt fragments that yet 
remain are sublime in their sacred loneli- 
ness and inexpressibly magnificent. As I 
stood in the centre of the recessed western 
door, so rich and yet so simple in its beauty, 
and gazed down the nave toward all that 
time and malice have spared of the lovely 
chancel, I thought of that reverend pilgrim, 
Dr. Johnson, who stood there more than 
one hundred years ago ; and I wondered 
whether for him then, as to-day for me, 
the glory of the sun was blazing on those 
gray and mouldering relics, and the strong 
wind singing in the shattered arcades, and 
whether he also may have pondered on the 
solemn thought that even this ruin, so bleak 
and so forlorn, is more permanent than the 
best of mortal strength and more eloquent 
than the best of mortal speech. 



90 SCOTTISH BOEDER SCENERY. 



IX. 

SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY. 

CARLISLE, September 30, 1895. — Glas- 
gow faded in a dense fog, on the hot 
September morning when I said farewell to 
its bnsy streets and happy homes, and my 
first glimpses of sunshine were caught as 
the mists parted over the towers, cones, 
steeples, and gray and red houses of 
Motherwell and Elemington. The course 
was southeasterly, across Lanarkshire, and, 
since only a passing glance at the country 
was possible, it seemed wise to make the 
most of it. Just as the character of an 
individual may, to some extent, be divined 
from his environment, so the life of a 
people may be deduced from the aspect of 
its habitations and its visible pursuits. 
Wishart was soon passed, — a large, crowded 
town, encompassed with pastures, and with 
many pretty hedge-rows in which the haws 
were gleaming red against the green. It is 
mostly a level land, but near to Law and to 



SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY. 91 

Castleliill there are deep and finely wooded 
ravines, and beyond the broad expanse of 
hay fields and meadows adjacent there are 
long lines of trees, like distant sentinels, on 
the dim horizon. At gray Carluke, partly 
on a hillside and partly in a verdant vale, 
the eye lingers pleased upon the red roofs, 
and upon woods of fir, and green and 
pleasant pastures, and, now and then, the 
silver thread of a brook. Around Car- 
stairs there is much open country, and a 
river glides through the plain and gladdens 
it, while crowds of sprightly starlings, 
twinkling in the sunshine, skim over the 
stubble of fields but lately reaped, and now 
shining with orange tints and green. Eine 
hills presently appear, to the westward of 
the track, on some of which there are 
grand reaches of woods ; and sometimes an 
isolated farmhouse, with many cone-shaped 
yellow haystacks, shows prettily through the 
trees. Soon I am among bleak moors 
and fern-streaked hills, and I see that in 
many places the bed of the river has been 
laid bare by intense drouth, — for this is 
the hottest September known in Britain for 
many years. The stream is Evan Water, 
and the course is along its valley, through 
a region of low mountains, moors, and 



92 SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY. 

occasional marshes. Northward a beauti- 
ful prospect opens, of the lonely mystery 
of the vacant hills, on which, beneath a 
flood of sunshine, the fern, the heather, 
and the grass are commingled, in masses 
of colour, brown and emerald, and pink 
and gold. The fern has been crisped by 
heat, and turned to russet. A few cottages 
are noted, amid this wilderness, and, in a 
little inclosure beside one of the lonely 
houses on the moor, a white gravestone 
tells its melancholy tale of the partings 
that are inevitable and the tragedy that 
never ends. In the few trees there are 
touches of colour, and upon the gaunt hill- 
sides, as they recede, the multitudes of 
couchant sheep seem like bits of stone, in 
the distance. I have passed Moffat, which 
is the entrance to the Vale of Yarrow and 
lone St. Mary's Loch, — places precious 
with golden memories of the Ettrick Shep- 
herd, and the Bard of Rydal, and the Min- 
strel of the North, — and I have left the 
region of the Hartf ells and now am on the 
lowland plain. In the objects that com- 
pose the Border scenery there is neither 
great variety nor striking character ; yet the 
scenery is never monotonous. The smooth, 
green fields, intersected with hedge-rows, 



SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY. 93 

the trim white roads, winding away over 
hill and plain, the dark, still rivers, crossed 
by many a stone bridge, picturesque upon 
its strong and graceful arches, the comfort- 
able farmhouses, each amid its shaded and 
flower-spangled lawns, the occasional palace 
upon its upland, embosomed in lofty elms, 
the ever- changing groups of sheep and cat- 
tle, the frequent flights of rooks, always so 
suggestive of ordered industry and yet of 
adventure, mischief, and sport, the slumber- 
ous mist upon the landscape, and the gen- 
eral air of permanence and repose, — all 
these blend themselves into endless pictures 
of diversified, piquant beauty. Through 
Wamphrey, Dinwoodie, Netherscleugh, and 
Ecclefechan, onward I speed, and so, across 
a long stretch of level green country, much 
variegated with hedge-rows and strips of 
woodland, I come to the Eden, and see the 
villas on its sunny banks, and the great 
square cathedral tower, and the red and 
gray buildings of antique Carlisle. 



94 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

X. 

SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

From my Note Book. 

FROM Edinburgh, through Portobello 
and Musselburgh, it is a short drive to 
the battle-field of Prestonpans. It was a 
bright summer morning when I traversed 
that region, and the scene of rural peace 
that was presented by it offered a strong 
contrast with the stormy picture, — speed- 
ily drawn by the nimble fingers of fancy, 
— of old and half -forgotten war. Upon 
that field, September 21, 1745, the High- 
land followers of Charles Edward Stuart 
struck a blow that shook the throne of 
England, and if the advantage then gained 
had been ably pursued the house of Han- 
over would have fallen, and the house of 
Stuart would have reigned once more. 

It was a rapid fight, — the Highlanders 
showing terrible ferocity, and conquering 
almost in an instant. Sir John Cope, lead- 
ing an English force of three thousand 
soldiers, had landed at Dunbar, on Sep- 



SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 95 

tember 17, and inarched along the coast 
toward Edinburgh, — then held by Prince 
Charles, who was giving balls at Holyrood. 
The Prince, with a force about equal to 
the number of his foe, moved eastward to 
Duddingston, drew his sword, and "flung 
away the scabbard." Cope advanced by 
the low road from Seton to Preston ; the 
Highlanders occupied the higher ground, 
and between the two armies there was a 
bog. Colonel Gardiner, upon the English 
side, urged an attack, but his commander 
chose to stand upon the defensive, and in 
that way, no doubt, made his fatal error. 
The Prince's army was piloted across the 
bog by Anderson of Whitburgh, and in a 
few minutes the forces of Cope were in full 
retreat, — that officer himself never paus- 
ing till he reached Berwick. Gardiner, cut 
down by a scythe, expired almost at his 
own door. On the Prince's side, four 
officers and fifty soldiers were killed, and 
six officers and seventy soldiers wounded ; 
while of the English, five officers and four 
hundred soldiers were killed, and eighty 
officers and two thousand soldiers captured. 
The Highlanders also captured Cope's bag- 
gage, which had been left at Cockenzie, 
and £2500. 



g6 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

It is an old story and has often been 
told, but the pilgrim who stands upon the 
veritable scene of the battle apprehends as 
never before the suspense, the shuddering 
excitement, the carnage, the panic, and the 
horror of that memorable episode in the 
Stuart wars. The field is now divided by 
the tracks of the North British railway, 
and the most of it is devoted to grain and 
pasture. I saw and ascended the ancient 
Market Cross of Preston, — once the cen- 
tre of the village, now the chief object vis- 
ible in a market garden, — and I viewed 
the forlorn fragments that yet remain of 
Preston Castle, not far away. The Tower 
was once formidable as a place of guard- 
rooms and dungeons, but it is tame and 
common now. Close to the railway there 
is a plain monument, on which appears 
the simple inscription: "To Col. Gardiner, 
who fell in the battle of Prestonpans, 21 
Sept. 1745." A touching allusion to that 
gallant gentleman occurs in a letter, pre^ 
served among the Culloden Papers, from 
General Wightman to the Lord President 
of Scotland; Newcastle, 26 Sept. 1745: 
"Honest, pious, bold Gardiner died in the 
field, and was stripe very nigh to his own 
house, as is said. I believe he prayed for 



SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 97 

it and got his desire ; for his state of health 
was bad, and his heart was broken with 
the behaviour of the Irish whom he com- 
manded." 

From Preston a short drive brought me 
to Port Seton, and at Seton House I met 
Mrs. Dunlop, a kindly gentlewoman, who 
showed me the principal rooms of that inter- 
esting mansion, and especially its library. 
There, among other relics, I saw a book of 
funeral sermons, one of them being Laud's 
dying speech, delivered on the scaffold. It 
had once been the property of a duchess of 
Argyle, and the name of Anna Argyle was 
written on the title-page of each discourse. 
On the wall there was an uncommonly good 
portrait of Garrick as Hamlet, together with 
a painting of Daniel Webster, and several 
pictures of North American Indians. Mrs. 
Dunlop said that her husband, when a 
youth, about sixty years ago, had visited 
America and had obtained those relics. She 
also indicated a copy of Nasmith's fine por- 
trait of Burns, but said, ' ' It has not the 
exuberant, birdlike look, as if he were sing- 
ing in the air, which is in the original.' 1 
From the Castle I went to Seton Abbey, — 
a venerable and beautiful church. Nothing 



98 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

remains of it except the chancel, the two 
transepts, and a tower. The nave is gone, 
or, perhaps, never existed. I was much 
impressed with the sense of death, — ex- 
tinction, ■ — conclusion, — utter finality and 
silence, — that is all about the place. In 
the chancel is the tomb of that Lord Seton 
who was killed at Flodden, and in the south 
transept is that of Isabella Seton. The 
Setons had the earldom of Winton. Isa- 
bella married a gentleman who would have 
been Earl of Perth, but he died, and he was 
buried in this church. Both tombs have 
been despoiled, and they are much decayed. 
That of Isabella is inscribed with some 
quaint and good lines, by Drummond of 
Hawthornden : — 

" In steed of epitaphes and airye praise 
This monument a lady chaste did raise 
To her lord's living fame, and after death 
Her bodye doth unto this place bequeath 
To rest with his till God's shrill trumpet 

sound. 
Thoch tyme her life no tyme her love can 
hound." 

Later, though not much, Isabella married 
a gentleman named Bothwell, who was un- 
kind to her ; so it had been wise if she had 



SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 99 

remained true to her original purpose, as 
denoted in the epitaph that she inspired. I 
noted especially in Seton Abbey the large 
flat stones over the vaults of Lord Wemyss 
and his wife, the two fonts, ancient and 
defaced, the ribbed roof of the Lady chapel, 
which is superb, the remains of several old 
tombs, and the fragments of carved stone, 

— one piece, in particular, showing the 
Win ton arms, with the mottoes, "Hazard 
zit fordward" and "In via virtuti, via 
nulla." In the north chancel there is a 
tomb consecrated to James Oglevie of 
Birnest, 1618, and Georgius Oglevie of 
Carnousis. Seton Abbey, externally, is 
of exceptional beauty, — impressive with 
solemn grandeur and pleasing with deli- 
cacy and grace. The green moss around its 
buttresses and the grasses that grow upon 
parts of its roof augment in its aspect the 
effect of venerable antiquity, and likewise 
they impart to it an air of gentle melan- 
choly, harmonious equally with its remi- 
niscent character and its sequestered and 
lonely situation. Seton House is modern, 

— the old castle having been burnt down 
many years ago, — but the Abbey i« " 
the rarest antiquities of Scot]!" 

the summit of the house th° 



IOO SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

cent view. Several showers had fallen, but 
the rain was now over, and a glorious bow 
spanned the whole arch of heaven. East- 
ward the sky was black, and under it the 
vast bulk of Berwick Law towered in sullen 
majesty, while far to the west Arthur's 
Seat and the Salisbury Crag were sumptu- 
ous and splendid in the glow of sunset; 
and northward, in front, a bright green 
sea, flecked with white caps, was shuddering 
beneath the gale. 



It is alleged by various authorities that 
Seton Abbey was founded by George, the 
second Lord Seton, June 20, 1493 ; but this 
is doubted by other antiquarians, who de- 
clare that the church was founded earlier, 
as the parochial church, and that it was 
made collegiate by the second Lord Seton, 
in the time of James the Fourth [1488, 1513]. 
In architectural style the edifice is Middle 
Pointed. The choir consists of three bays 
with a semi-hexagonal end. The transepts 
consist of two bays, and, as is customary in 
the Scottish churches, they were designed 
for mortuary chapels. The tower is low 
' ^uare, and upon its top is a truncated 
■"->ire, of which the haunches are 
>ht of the tower is twenty- 



SCOTTISH MEMORIES. IOI 

four feet, six inches. The length of the 
choir is sixty-five feet, three inches ; that 
of the north transept, twenty-nine feet, six 
inches ; that of the south transept, thirty- 
one feet, three inches. The roof of the choir 
is a pointed vault, which from the west end 
to the centre is plain, but from the centre to 
the east end there runs a ridge-piece, uniting 
transverse and diagonal pieces, which spring 
from floriated corbels and are joined with 
sculptured bosses. The windows have two 
and three lights, foliated loop-tracery in the 
heads, and moulded hoods with floriated 
ends. Beneath the east window of the north 
wall, in a monumental recess, are recum- 
bent effigies of a knight in armour, and a 
lady. The male figure is five feet, nine 
inches in length. The knight's head rests 
upon a helmet ; that of the lady upon a 
cushion. This is the tomb of the second 
Lord Seton, who fell at Flodden. George 
Seton, the fifth earl, participated in the re- 
bellion of 1715, and, having been captured 
at Preston, was sentenced to death for trea- 
son. He escaped, and he died at Rome, in 
1749. The Parbroath Setons survive in 
America, and are well represented by the 
admirable scholar, Monsignor Robert Seton 
of Jersey. 



102 SCOTTISH MEMOBIES. 

The Argyle Cross, at Iona, stands near 
the little mound that St. Colmnba ascended 
on that memorable day, toward the end of 
his life, when he gave his farewell blessing 
to the island. It is alone, in a green square, 
enclosed within an iron fence, and around 
it are tall bushes of the fuchsia, covered 
with graceful, drooping blooms. It is formed 
like the cross of St. Martin, in front of the 
cathedral ruin, — except that the ends of 
the transverse beam are not grooved to the 
nimbus, as they are in St. Martin's, evi- 
dently incomplete, — and it is made of red 
granite taken from the quarry in Mull. 
The inscription upon it is cut in this 
manner : — 

TO 

ELIZABETH 

SUTHERLAND 

WIFE OF 

GEORGE 

EIGHTH DUKE 

OF ARGYLE 

THIS CROSS 

IS ERECTED 

BY 

HER HUSBAND 

IN THE ISLAND 

SHE LOVED 

1879 



SCOTTISH MEMORIES. IO3 

It is a pleasant journey from Edinburgh 
around to Gourock, — a crescent route that 
sometimes may be of great service to a 
traveller who wishes to get speedily from 
the east coast to the waterways upon the 
west. I left the capital at early morning. 
The sky was cloudless, the air crisp, the 
sun bright, and only on the far horizon was 
there any mist. In England when the hills 
are misty and the sheep lie down you may 
look for fair weather ; in Scotland all por- 
tents appear to be dubious. At first the 
course was through a rolling country of 
pastures and lawns, diversified with hay- 
stacks, golden sheaves of the late harvest, 
clumps of trees with shining leaves, hedges 
still green, and woods beginning to turn 
brown. Then, near Currie Hill, stone 
houses came into the picture, and the long 
shadows, falling westward, streamed across 
vacant fields, in which many rooks were 
fluttering about, upon their ever-comic 
search for plunder. All this part of Scot- 
land is far better wooded than it was of 
old, and on every side there are signs of 
prosperity, order, and taste. The distant 
prospects across the country grew more 
and more lovely, — a sweet confusion of 
many-coloured fields, red-roofed cottages, 



104 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

mansions of gray stone bosomed in large 
trees, pastures with flocks of sheep, smooth, 
white roads winding through plain and over 
hill and wooded ravines, each with a bab- 
bling stream in its green and rocky depth. 
Wide tracts were passed of unoccupied 
land, all of it cleared and in fine condi- 
tion, notwithstanding its apparent solitude. 
Then a light mist began to drape the varie- 
gated landscape and slowly to settle upon 
the lovely green of the pastures, and from 
Fauldhouse to Hollytown and Bellshill 
scarce anything was visible. Near the lat- 
ter place a huge stone quarry was suddenly 
revealed, — the workmen upon its various 
ledges looking like pigmies. Then a bright, 
dark river was crossed, and in the neigh- 
bouring meadows great nights of starlings 
seemed almost to darken the air. Ibrox 
and Cardonald were left behind, — towns 
of a rough region, devoted to tall chim- 
neys, smoke, shops, coal, and the indus- 
tries of the railway, — and in a little while 
I dimly saw, just glimmering through the 
fog, the crowded buildings of Paisley, be- 
neath a sun that hung in the gloomy heavens 
like a globe of tarnished silver. At Pais- 
ley you think of the old Abbey which is 
there, with its wonderful echoing aisle, and 



SCOTTISH MEMORIES. IO5 

of the ruins close by, of Crookston Castle, 
where it is said Queen Mary was plighted 
to Darnley. The run from Paisley t'o the 
southern bank of the Clyde was swiftly 
made, and at Gourock Pier, I embarked 
comfortably for the North. Much time 
may be saved in that way, — for it is a 
long sail between Glasgow and Gourock, 
and sometimes a weary one. 



The heather was pink on the sides of the 
hills and over their grim tops the white 
mist was drifting, and in the tender light of 
morning the Highlands looked their love- 
liest when I bade them farewell. Silver 
clouds dappled the sky, mingled with 
streamers of dark slate, the air was soft 
and cool, and on a shining sea, without one 
ripple to break its calm, the boat sped south- 
ward, down Kerrera Sound. For a time the 
light mist lingered upon the land, but pres- 
ently the rising breeze swept it away, and 
then the rocky shores of Kerrera were re- 
flected deep in the smooth water, — its lone 
hills gaunt and grim, and its verdure won- 
derfully bright. A few buoys here and 
there, marking the channel, animated the 
picture, — each being thickly covered with 
pershing sea-birds, while other sea-birds 



106 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

circled around them. In the distance, north- 
westward, rose the mountains of Mull — a 
long line of sable bastions and parapets, dis- 
tinct and huge, against a streak of yellow 
light. On the low shores of little islands in 
the stream there was an occasional dash of 
sudden breakers, as if the sea were momen- 
tarily troubled, but these surges were far off 
and inaudible. When the boat drew near 
to Easdale, the sunshine fell, in long, spear- 
like shafts, upon the dark water, and the 
grand cliffs of Seil were burnished with 
gold, while all the rocks were seen to be 
covered with sea-gulls, seemingly in deep 
meditation, — so still were they, from head 
to foot, and so unspeakably solemn. A 
woman and a child, standing among the 
thickly scattered slate-stones on the tiny, cir- 
cular island of Easdale, waved their hands in 
farewell, as the boat glided away. The vil- 
lage of Easdale, sheltered under high banks, 
facing a broad bay, and made up of small 
stone cottages, is simplicity itself ; but it 
looked to be the abode of unusual comfort. 
New pictures, however, soon dimmed the 
impression of its cosy tranquillity. Prom- 
ontories and islands, of irregular size and 
shape, came quickly into view; the great 
rocks, westward, in the sea, far off, seemed 



SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 107 

like monsters who had risen to breathe, 
and were resting on the surface ; a single 
fisherman, in a little boat, flitted by, like a 
dream ; the rapid solan-goose winged his 
expeditious way, close to the water ; and 
all around, and especially astern, the air 
was full of hungry gulls. At Luing the 
life-boat came off, with passengers, and 
then, over a smooth sea, and under brilliant 
skies, all golden and blue, the boat skimmed 
blithely through Dornsmor, — the Great 
Gate, — and past Duntroon Castle, superb 
upon its crag, to the rock and fort of 
Crinan. 

A lovely view of Edinburgh may be 
obtained by a ramble to the Braid Hills. 
The turf on which we trod [August 30, 
1890] was fine, strong, elastic, and of a 
remarkably beautiful colour. All around 
were sprinkled daisies, foxglove, butter- 
cups, and bluebells. Thistles were in 
flower, — and few objects are more pleasing 
to the eye than the flowering thistle. The 
chaffinches were everywhere, and many 
rooks, loquacious and vocal, croaked in the 
pleasant air. Little grass-paths, straying 
over hill and dell, allured the wanderer's 
steps, and in every direction glistened the 



108 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

furse, — which is called whins, — and the 
abundant yellow blossoms of the colt's-foot. 
A more brilliant scene it would be hard to 
find. A few white clouds were drifting 
over the stately city in the distance, and 
around the far horizon floated a delicate 
wreath of mist ; but the chill hills were 
clearly defined to the vision, and so were 
the Lomonds in Fife, and so was the ever- 
present mountain of Arthur's seat. Near by 
we saw the river Jordan, flowing through 
a dell that is wooded with some of the finest 
trees in Scotland. We explored the farm 
and visited the home of that excellent, most 
respected lady, Miss Menie Trotter. Black- 
ford Home it is called — and it is somewhat 
famous among Scottish homes. 

From the Braid Hills we walked to Craig- 
crook, once the home of Lord Jeffrey, — an 
elegant residence, sequestered in a park, 
and pleasantly suggestive of the mansions 
of Warwickshire. Many of the rooms were 
shown to us, and also the garden, wherein 
were many flowers. Lord Jeffrey was fond 
of yellow roses, and he cultivated them with 
great success, but there are not any of them 
on the place now. Craigcrook was occupied, 
after Jeffrey's time, by Mr. John Hunter : 
the present occupant is Mr. Crowle. The 



SCOTTISH MEMORIES. IO9 

library, which was Jeffrey's, is an antique 
room, furnished with alcoves, in the shape 
of Gothic arches, for bookshelves, and it 
looks upon the park, which has many noble 
trees and a splendid vista of lawn. Upon 
the wall there were portraits of Jeffrey and 
Scott. In the cosey sitting-room the motto 
over the fireplace had a touching signifi- 
cance : ' ' We want no future that breaks 
the ties of the past." Other mottoes were 
in other places, — one being "Live pure. 
Speak true. Right wrong," and another 
the familiar lines that end the precept 
speech of Polonius to Laertes. In the spa- 
cious dining-room there were many excel- 
lent paintings, and above these are many 
quaint bedrooms : those in the turret much 
captivated my fancy. As I looked upon the 
richly furnished drawing-room I thought of 
the poet Moore, and his singing, in that 
very room, and Jeffrey listening, with tears 
in his eyes, to " There's a song of the olden 
time." Moore has left a record of this, in 
his diary. He was there in 1825. Craig- 
crook is castellated, and at a distance the 
aspect of the building, as its cones and tur- 
rets rise among the trees, is mediaeval and 
especially attractive. I brought away a leaf 
of holly. 



IIO SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 

We walked through the neighbouring park 
of Ravelston and looked on the old house. 
Sir Walter Scott gften visited that mansion, 
in the days of his friend Lady Keith, and 
he had it in mind when he wrote the de- 
scription of Tillietudelem. So said my com- 
panion, David Douglas, the most delightful 
guide that any pilgrim ever had in Edin- 
burgh and its classic neighbourhood, and 
a charming comrade anywhere. There is 
much timber on the Ravelston estate, 
and there is a deep and dark lake in its 
woods, — an old quarry -hole, — the depth 
of which is so great as to be unknown. It 
would be lonesome at night in Ravelston 
park, and it would be dangerous because 
of the precipitous cliffs which are there. 
Scott's lines came into my thoughts as we 
strolled away : — 

" Till onRavelston's cliff and on Clermiston's 
lea, 

Died away the wild war-notes of bonnie Dun- 
dee." 



TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. I 



XI. 

TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

IN the westering glow of a June day I 
rested at the Hop-Pole in Tewkesbury 
and saw, for the first time, the noble Abbey 
which is at once the glory of that ancient 
town and one of the grandest relics of feudal 
England. A vast, grim tower, necked with 
dusky orange tints and gray with age, rears 
its majestic head above a cluster of red 
brick dwellings, in a wide, green plain at 
the confluence of the Avon and the Severn, 
and, visible for many miles around, an- 
nounces, with silent but moving eloquence, 
one of the most storied of English historic 
shrines. Old Tewkesbury, if not an active 
town, is distinctly an emblem of to-day ; 
and yet, amid all its romantic and impres- 
sive associations, its life of the passin* 
hour seems to surge and break as at the 
base of monumental ages, long gone and 
half forgotten. Various antique buildings 
of the town have been restored, and several 



112 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

timbered fronts of rare beauty diversify, 
among its habitations, a general prospect 
of tinted stucco, red brick, and those staring, 
shutterless windows that look like lidless 
eyes. Upon those picturesque homes the 
gaze of the traveller lingers with deep pleas- 
ure, while fancy, brooding on their quaint- 
ness, readily conjures up long vistas of 
mediaeval dwellings, with, all about them, 
the steel-clad warriors of Lancaster and of 
York, in days when the Wars of the Eoses 
were steeping England in blood and grief. 
Tewkesbury in its general aspect is mod- 
ern ; and yet it is to the stormy period of 
those bitter wars that it carries back the 
pilgrim's thought. The Abbey is more than 
the town, and the distant Past is more than 
the Present. Dedicated in 1123, that Abbey 
was an old church [for it had already stood 
there during three centuries and a half] 
when the fierce battle between the armies 
of Edward the Fourth and Queen Margaret 
raged around it, and the house of Lancas- 
ter, in 1471, suffered such a crushing de- 
feat. Yet it appears now much as it must 
have appeared then. Buildings, it is true, 
press closely upon every side of it and 
somewhat mar, just as they do at Lincoln, 
an effect which otherwise would be that of 



TEWKESBURY AXD SALISBURY. II3 

superlative stateliness. Not every Gothic 
giant in the realm of England is so fortu- 
nate as Salisbury, or Canterbury, or Win- 
chester, or, most favoured of all, Durham, 
in charm of situation. Yet, in spite of 
a commonplace environment, the Abbey 
of Tewkesbury dominates its contiguous 
landscape ; and no man who is capable of 
serious feeling can look without reverence 
upon that venerable church, there keeping 
its long, mysterious vigil among the labours, 
loves, sorrows, and evanescent nothings of 
an everyday world. 

A mere musing wanderer among the 
relics of Long Ago must not presume to 
tell their story. It is not needed. Yet 
such a wanderer may extol their grace and 
their glory, and may commend them to 
other dreamers, like himself. In the little, 
winding streets of Tewkesbury there was 
no crowd, as I rambled through them at 
nightfall, and there was but little motion 
of persons or sign of life ; and at evening 
service in a chapel of the Abbey the wor- 
shippers were so few that the presence of 
a single stranger quite augmented the group. 
It was a solemn service, no doubt, but I 
could not much heed it, for thinking of 
the ghosts that were all around me, and 



114 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

for thinking of the gray splendour of the 
church itself. Columns as grand may be 
seen at Durham, — of all the cathedrals 
of England the most grim and the most 
austere, — hut neither at Durham nor else- 
where is the view of nave and choir more 
spacious, more celestial, or more stimulative 
of reverent awe ; and not in any temple of 
religion have been effected interments more 
pathetic. There, just beneath the tower, 
was laid the beloved Prince Edward, son of 
Henry the Sixth, of whom, on a memorial 
brass in the pavement, it is sadly said that 
he "was cruelly slain whilst but a youth " ; 
and there, in a tomb at the back of the 
altar, in one of the most extensive and 
commodious Lady Chapels known to exist, 
lies buried one of his reputed assassins, 
George, Duke of Clarence, Shakespeare's 
"false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," — 
himself the alleged victim of midnight 
murder in the Tower of London. In for- 
mer days the interior of the tomb of Clar- 
ence was sometimes shown, and persons 
entering within it beheld the bones of the 
Duke and of his wife Isabella, daughter of 
the great Earl of Warwick, the king-maker ; 
but that spectacle is no longer afforded. A 
rude drawing of the interior is, however, 



TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 1 15 

hung upon the tomb, showing the likeness 
of those relics, which are in a transparent 
box, affixed to the wall, at some height, — 
because in seasons when the Severn over- 
flows its banks the vaults beneath the Abbey 
are occasionally inundated. Not distant 
from those royal persons rest other historic 
chieftains, the De Clares and the De Spen- 
cers, at various times Earls of Gloucester, 
and several of them victims of the heads- 
man's axe. One notable De Spencer, in 
particular, is thought to lie there, — the 
youthful Hugh, who was the friend and fa- 
vourite of Edward the Second, and whom 
Roger Mortimer, predominant lover of Ed- 
ward's queen, Isabella, caused to be dragged 
on a hurdle through the streets of Hereford 
[1326], and then barbarously hanged and 
quartered. Of Gilbert De Clare, tenth Earl 
of Gloucester and last of his house, who also 
lies buried at Tewkesbury, the traveller ob- 
serves that he was slain at the battle of 
Bannockburn, and remembers him as a 
figure in Scott's poem of The Lord of the 
Isles. Every foot of the Abbey is historic ; 
and when at length reluctantly you leave 
it, a few steps will bring you to "the field 
by Tewkesbury," wherein the fight raged 
with its greatest fury, so that the Severn 



Il6 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

ran red with blood. Shakespeare, following, 
as he customarily did, the Tudor historians, 
makes that field the scene of the murder 
of Prince Edward. It is a peaceful place 
now, and when I walked upon it at early- 
morning, the sun was gilding its copious 
verdure of waving shade-trees and shining 
grass, the rooks were flying over it, with 
many a solemn caw, and the sleek cattle, 
feeding, or couched ruminant in careless 
groups, were scattered all along its glitter- 
ing, breezy plain. There is a tradition in 
Tewkesbury that the Lancastrian Prince of 
Wales was not murdered in the field, but 
in a house, then a palace, still extant, in the 
High Street, near the Cross, — a house now 
used for the display and sale of confection- 
ery. Upon the floor of one of the rooms in 
that building blood-stains, said to be of 
great age, are still visible. Such traces, 
indeed, the silent tokens of savagery and 
crime, cannot be eradicated, — as the visitor 
may learn, by convincing evidence, at such 
old houses as Clopton, near Stratford, and 
Compton-Wynyate, near Banbury, — the 
latter one of the most interesting mansions 
in England. It is a superstition in Tewkes- 
bury that at midnight on May 7, in every 
year, — that being the anniversary of the 



TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. II7 

Prince's assassination, — a spectral train, 
bearing his body, passes out of that house, 
to the solemn tolling of the Abbey bell, and 
vanishes. It is a cheerful place by day- 
light, with gaily trimmed casements, gar- 
nished counters, gleaming mirrors, and 
smiling girls ; but, late at night, when the 
shops were closed and the town was still, 
the whole region of the Cross with its dark, 
lowering, timbered fronts, its gloomy win- 
dows and its dusky passages, seemed indeed 
a fit haunt for phantoms, and the tale of 
the spectral obsequies was remembered 
more with a shudder than a smile. 

There are pleasant walks about Tewkes- 
bury. The town is not large, and its chief 
streets may be explored in a few hours. 
Most of its antique buildings are private. 
The Bell Inn stands at one end of it and 
the Bear Inn at the other — both timbered 
structures that date back to Plantagenet 
times. Near the Bear is an ancient bridge, 
across the Avon, — a bridge curiously in- 
dented, as the old custom was, with tri- 
angular embrasures, in which the pedestrian 
may find refuge from horses and vehicles, 
upon the narrow roadway. Crossing that 
bridge, after sunset, I found a footpath 
through the meadows, — which are very 



Il8 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

extensive, and upon which it is impos- 
sible to build, so frequently are they 
overflowed, — and presently I came to 
Avonmouth and saw where the waters of 
Shakespeare's river mingle with those of the 
Severn, and are carried onward to the all- 
embracing sea. The wide green fields were 
vacant, save for a silent angler here and 
there upon the river's brink. The distant 
town seemed asleep in the gloaming ; the 
notes of a mellow chime floated out from 
the Abbey tower ; and more near, the air 
was tremulous with the silver call of the 
lark. So, and of such antiquity and peace, 
that legendary city takes its place among 
the pictures that memory will always 
cherish. No traveller who rambles in the 
midlands of England, and especially no 
votary of Shakespeare, should omit the 
privilege of a prospect of Tewkesbury Ab- 
bey. Upon that scene the gaze of Shake- 
speare must often have rested, and the genius 
of Shakespeare has made it immortal. 

From Tewkesbury you may drift to many 
places of kindred beauty and interest. 
"Once more I came to Sarum Close." 
It is many a year -since I read The Angel 
in the House, — that exalted, chivalric, 
tender poem by Coventry Patmore, — but 



TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. II9 

it all came back to me, as I walked again 
along the familiar avenue, and approached 
the stately cathedral of Salisbury. No 
fitter environment could be found for a 
representative love-story of the more fas- 
tidious order, and seldom in poetical litera- 
ture has scenery been so deftly blended 
with sentiment as it is in those melodious 
pages. Among the cities of England none 
can excel Salisbury in opulent refinement ; 
and now that Americans, voyaging to 
Southampton, — as many do, since the 
establishment of the American Line, — are 
landed almost at its gates, they ought surely 
to improve the hour for making practical 
acquaintance with one of the loveliest 
places in England. My own slight knowl- 
edge of the city dates back to 1885 and 
involves several visits. The White Hart, 
near the cathedral, is the most desirable 
and convenient inn, and from that point it 
is easily possible to visit many scenes of 
rare interest and soft delight. A walk of 
two miles, mostly through the fields, will 
bring you to Bemerton ; and then you are 
in the valley where George Herbert lived 
some part of his saintly life and wrote some 
of his exquisite devotional poetry. St. 
Andrew's, the tiny church of Bemerton, 



120 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

nestles deep in the bosom of a green vale, 
making the corner of a little triangular 
graveyard, full of crosses and cedar trees, 
and over it broods the blessing of perfect 
repose. Chief among the inscriptions with- 
in its walls are the words of sacred promise 
and comfort, ' ' In this place will I give 
peace ' ' ; and never were words better 
chosen for the purpose they fulfil. I 
entered it at evening, when it was all in 
shadow ; when birds were calling their 
mates ; when the children in the neighbour- 
ing rectory were singing a vesper hymn ; 
and when, at the approach of night, the 
summer breeze was heavy with the scent of 
roses and of new-mown hay ; and very 
sweet it was, there to meditate upon the 
continent character, the pure spirit, the 
gentle life, and the exquisite art of the poet 
and preacher whose presence once made it 
a cynosure and a shrine for many loving 
worshippers, and whose name has hallowed 
it forever. George Herbert died at Bemer- 
ton in 1633, and his dust reposes near the 
altar of his little church. 

The rector of Bemerton [1894], Rev. 
Francis Warre, has addressed a letter to 
friends of the church, asking their assist- 
ance toward the restoration of the building, 



TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 121 

so that it may be made, as nearly as possi- 
ble, what it was when Herbert lived. The 
chnrch is only fifty feet long, by fourteen 
wide, and it is said to have been built in 
1408, by an Abbess of Wilton, — then a 
monastery, upon the site of which now 
stands Wilton House, the splendid and 
storied abode of the noble family of Pem- 
broke. The chancel was repaired by Her- 
bert, to whom the little church was precious. 
In 1866 that chancel was rebuilt. It is 
now thought desirable that a plaster ceil- 
ing should be removed from it, so that the 
wooden roof of the nave may appear as it 
was in Herbert's time ; that the original 
splays of the windows should be restored, 
and the walls relieved of a covering of lath 
and plaster ; that the chancel should be 
newly roofed, as it has fallen much into 
decay ; that the nave should be provided 
with oak seats; that the sanctuary should 
be enclosed within a rail ; and that a font 
should be placed at the entrance. Those 
changes will help to preserve that historic 
edifice for future ages. The rector asks 
for contributions ; and if every lover of 
George Herbert's poetry were to give but 
a mite, he would not wait long for the 
means to accomplish his good work. 



122 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

Another pleasant walk from Salisbury, 
going southward about two miles, along 
the bank of the Wiltshire Avon and 
through green meadows sweetly shaded 
by elm trees and vocal with song of thrush 
and cawing of rooks, will bring you to 
Britf ord church, — a relic of the four- 
teenth century, and precious to the Shake- 
speare antiquary as containing the tomb 
of that Duke of Buckingham whom king 
Richard the Third, with such sanguinary 
precipitation, sends to the block, alike in 
history and in the play. The tomb is a low, 
rectangular structure, covered with a flat 
stone, and it stands against the north wall 
of the chancel. Its sides are richly chased 
with figures and symbols of saints, and 
over it impend a carved arch and cross ; 
while above it, upon a brass plate, appears 
the inscription : ' ' Henricus Stafford, Dux 
Buckingham, decapitatus apud Salisbury, 
1 Ric. Ill, a.d. 1483." Doubt has been cast 
upon the authenticity of that relic, — it 
being alleged that the remains of the Duke 
were conveyed to London and buried at 
Grayfriars ; but, since at that time Lionel 
Woodville, brother-in-law to the Duke, 
was the Bishop of Salisbury, it seems not 
unlikely that the interment would have 



TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 123 

been accomplished by him, speedily and 
without ostentation, close at home. In 
Britford, at any rate, stands the tomb ; 
and as I think of it I see again the silent 
church, the sunlight streaming in coloured 
rays upon the chancel floor, the mural 
tablets and the vacant pews ; while upon 
the walls outside there is a faint rustle of 
leaves and a twitter of birds among the 
ivy, and all is peace. More than four hun- 
dred years have passed since the ambitious, 
scheming, unlucky Buckingham was sud- 
denly laid low by the dangerous monarch 
against whom he had raised his rebellious 
hand ; yet in the fresh vitality of Shake- 
speare's page it seems but as a thing of 
yesterday. In that tomb lie the ashes of 
as proud an ambition as ever filled the 
breast of man ; and in that tomb is buried 
the key to a terrible mystery, — the great 
historic secret of Bichard's reign : for 
Buckingham aspired to wear the crown 
of England, and Buckingham, earlier and 
better than any other man, there is good 
reason to believe, . knew the fate of the 
Princes in the Tower. They show you, 
in the Market Place of Salisbury, a build- 
ing that stands nearly upon the spot 
where the Duke was beheaded, — a build- 



124 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

ing situated on the north side of the square, 
near St. John's street, and now devoted to 
trade. There, in Richard's time, stood the 
Blue Boar Inn, and the yard of that inn 
was the place of the execution. 

To visit Salisbury is to visit Stonehenge, 
and on the drive to Stonehenge the trav- 
eller will not omit to pause both at Old 
Sarum and at Amesbury. The former is 
only an earthwork now, but, its massive 
heights abundantly exemplify the formid- 
able character of ancient fortifications, 
and on its breezy slopes the long grass 
ripples in the wind, and myriads of butter- 
cups brighten the emerald meadow with a 
sheen of gold. Close by there is an old 
habitation called the Castle Inn ; and if 
you are in quest of a refuge from the ills 
and worries of conventional life, I know 
not where you could more certainly find it 
than in that quaint dwelling, — with all of 
Old Sarum for your pleasure ground, and 
with the distant spire of Salisbury cathe- 
dral, towering noble and clear on the 
southern horizon, for your silent monitor, 
pointing up to heaven. In Amesbury once 
stood the monastery, dear to the lover of 
Tennyson's Idyls as the haven and last 
refuge of poor Guinevere, in her remorse 



TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 1 25 

and penitence and shame. Nothing now 
remains of it ; but you will see, in the church 
wall, a remnant of the ancient ecclesiastical 
building, and, entering the park of Sir 
Edmund Antrobus, you will obtain a glimpse 
of wide lawns whereon, perhaps, Guinevere 
may have wandered, and of the sequestered 
Avon on which her sad gaze may many a 
time have rested, in those long years before 
she drifted away, "to where, beyond these 
voices, there is peace." The ancient mon- 
astery was made into a dwelling by Somer- 
set, the Protector, and afterward it passed 
through various hands and suffered many 
changes. The Duke of Queensberry owned 
it in Queen Anne's time, and the poet 
Gay, so kindly befriended by the sprightly 
Duchess of Queensberry, was a frequent 
visitor there, and there he composed The 
Beggar's Opera. I saw the stone room 
called Gay's Cave, which is built into a 
high bank, and so placed as to form the 
central feature of a hillside terrace that 
takes the shape of a diamond and by that 
name is known. That was the genial 
poet's study, and as he looked forth from 
that bower he would behold a broad vista 
of emerald lawn, diversified with brilliant 
flowers and with shade-trees that were 



126 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 

the growth of centuries, the tall columns, 
bold capitals, and classic front of a stately- 
mansion that was the home of his friends, 
and, more near, the limpid waters of the 
Avon, brown in the shallows, rippling be- 
neath a lovely rustic bridge and sleeping in 
sun and shadow at his feet. 

The visitor to Stonehenge by day com- 
monly finds the stones surrounded with 
carriages and overrun with picnics, while 
in the centre is posted an expounder with 
a model. The day drive is one of exquisite 
beauty, — over the long, breezy reaches of 
Salisbury Plain, through fields of golden 
grain and scarlet poppy and long grass, 
that sways and tumbles underneath the 
cloud-shadows, like the tumbling plains of 
the sea ; and it is a drive that no one should 
miss. But Stonehenge, if you would truly 
feel its mystery and its power, should be 
seen under the cold light of the stars, and 
when the night wind is whispering through 
its wilderness of haunted rocks, when no 
human creature is near, and when nothing 
comes between your soul and heaven. 
Once, in distant days, I saw the ruin in 
that way, and the spirit that is within it 
was revealed. 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 12^ 



XII. 

STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

189U. 

IT has again been my fortune to dwell for 
a time in Stratford-upon-Avon and to 
deepen the old friendships and freshen the 
old associations of that hallowed place. 
Some of the kind faces that once smiled a 
welcome are seen no more, and some of 
the familiar resorts have been renovated, 
but in general the borough remains un- 
changed, and its allurement for the Shake- 
speare scholar is as potent as ever. In all 
England there is not a cleaner, more deco- 
rous, or more restful town than Stratford- 
upon-Avon, and even to look upon it is to 
receive a suggestion of peace and comfort. 
The physical prospect is still the same that 
travellers long have known. The red brick 
dwellings shine among the trees ; the flower- 
spangled meadows stretch away, on every 
hand ; the green hills, sprinkled over with 
copse and villa, glimmer through silver mist, 



128 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

all round the lovely Vale of the Red Horse, 
— Welcombe in the north, with its con- 
spicuous monument ; Meon in the south, 
rugged and bold ; Red Hill in the west ; 
and far away eastward, beyond a wide, 
smiling area of farms and villages, the 
crests of Edgehill, at Radley and Rising 
Sun, where once the armies of king 
Charles confronted his roundhead foe. The 
summer, this year [1894], came slowly. 
Much of the English June was like the 
American March. There was frost and in 
some places there was light snow, and it 
was needful to have frequent fires, —so 
that life was often bleak and dreary. But, 
all the while, the verdure deepened in 
colour, the roads and the hedges were free 
from dust, the white and coral hawthorn 
was abundant in sheltered places, and the 
thick-pleached elms, the green lanes, and 
the daisied meadows glistened with emerald 
sheen ; and presently a day came when we 
ceased to exchange Christmas greetings, 
and rejected the overcoat, and almost dis- 
carded the umbrella, — a day when Eng- 
land, which had been all frowns, decked 
herself once more in smiles, and we could 
look upon her face without a shiver. It is 
a face that can wear many expressions, but 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS. I29 

when propitious it is a face which to see is 
to love, — and nowhere is it more softly 
beautiful than in stately Warwickshire, 
and around the home of Shakespeare. 

The restoration of the Guild Hall and 
Grammar School at Stratford, substantially 
completed, has been made with excellent 
judgment and taste. That good work was 
planned and begun by the late Charles 
Edward Flower [1830-1892], and the cost 
of it was paid by him. It has been carried 
forward under the superintendence of his 
widow, whose devotion to every task and 
purpose cherished by him is that of rever- 
ent memory and affectionate zeal. The 
visitor to the Guild Hall sees it now much 
as it was when Shakespeare saw it, when 
a boy. It is a room fifty-two feet long by 
eighteen feet nine inches wide, and eight 
feet eight inches high. Three sides of it 
are panelled, — the panels resting upon a 
base of timber and rock. The ceiling is of 
timber and plaster and the floor of stone. 
One massive timber runs along the centre 
of the ceiling, from north to south, and 
with that the other timbers of the ceiling 
run parallel, — the intermediate spaces be- 
ing filled with plaster, finished with a wave- 
like surface. On the west side are four 



I30 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

spandrels, and also, high in the wall, nine 
windows, each about four feet by two, set 
near together and filled with small, leaded, 
diamond panes of white glass. At the 
north end is a large oak door, made in 
imitation of the doors of old, opening into 
a passage leading from the street, on the 
west, to the quadrangle and pedagogue's 
house, on the east. Upon the east wall 
there are four spandrels, and there is a 
brick chimney-breast, and near that is a 
large casement, made of green and white 
glass, through which you may look into the 
quadrangle. At the south end there are 
thirteen large upright and three small tim- 
bers, stained black, — as, indeed, most of 
the timbers are, whether new or old, — and 
between those the plaster reveals traces of 
ancient frescos. Five panels of the fresco 
are set in a large oak frame and are glazed. 
The walls, above the panels, are plastered 
and are finished with a smooth, cream- 
coloured surface. The north end of the 
hall adjoins the venerable church tower of 
the Guild, — one of the most picturesque 
objects in Stratford, and, unhappily, one 
that is crumbling to decay. In the east 
wall, near the north end, there is a door. 
In the ceiling there are thirty-seven lines 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 131 

of timber. At the south end a bit of the 
original timber, once ornamented with gay 
colour, still faintly visible, has been left 
untouched. Presentations of Miracle Plays 
and Mysteries were effected in that hall, in 
the time of Shakespeare's boyhood, and it 
may be true, as is believed, that the first 
dramatic performances the lad ever saw 
were seen by him in that room. As I sat 
there, on a sombre Sunday morning, alone 
and listening to the rain upon the roof, the 
chapel bell suddenly began to ring, and I 
remembered the tradition that this chapel 
bell, which had sounded in his ears when 
he was a schoolboy, was tolled at his fu- 
neral. 

The schoolroom is over the Guild Hall, 
and an oak partition of great age divides 
it in two parts. The main timbers of the 
roof, massive and rugged, cross the room 
at an altitude of about ten feet, and 
above them is a network of rafters. The 
staircase leading to the schoolroom is of 
oak, and very rich, and there are fine oak 
doors on the east side, and lattices on the 
west. On the south wall hangs a portrait 
of Henry Irving, as Hamlet, — that great 
actor being honoured there, as indeed he 
is everywhere else in Shakespeare's town. 



132 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

East of the southern branch of the school- 
room, and opening from it, is a quaint room 
called the Council Chamber, now used as 
a library. The roof, rising to a peak, 
is wrought of old timbers, bare, massive, 
and strange. An ancient oak table, much 
hacked by the jackknives of many genera- 
tions of boys, stands in the centre of that 
room, together with some oak benches, 
while around the walls are bookcases, con- 
taining about one thousand volumes, and 
at the north side is a dais sustaining a 
great chair and a reading-desk, above which 
hangs a copy of the Chandos portrait of 
Shakespeare. [The original of the Chan- 
dos portrait is at the Bethnal Green Mu- 
seum, in London, where the American 
pilgrim should see it, together with other 
priceless historic treasures of the kingdom. ] 
From the council-room a narrow, crooked 
staircase gives access to a tiny room be- 
neath the eaves, of the same general char- 
acter, — probably a priest's cell, in ecclesi- 
astical times, but used now as a storeroom 
and a study. The outside of the building 
is timber-crossed, with interstices of plaster, 
the roof being covered with red tiles. In 
the rear stands the little cottage in which 
dwelt Shakespeare's schoolmaster, Walter 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS. I33 

Roche, — a structure, now restored, con- 
taining a quaint, charming room, used as 
a study by the head-master of the Guild. 
At one time it was thought that this build- 
ing, one of the oldest houses in Stratford, 
must be sacrificed, but it has been deftly 
set upon new foundations, and it will, 
doubtless, be seen by a distant posterity. 
Human bones were discovered in the earth, 
while the work of restoration was in prog- 
ress, near to that building, — the remains, 
doubtless, of some ecclesiastic of long ago. 
In its renovated condition the schoolhouse 
of king Edward the Sixth, while it reveals 
the care of the restorer, retains its aspect 
of venerable antiquity, and it is more than 
ever one of the most precious historic 
shrines of Stratford. The day is near 
when the same good offices must be done 
for the Guild church, although even to 
touch that ancient fabric will be to mar 
the indescribable charm of its reverend 
age, the strange and awful beauty, — which 
no art can make and no passion of homage 
perpetuate, — of time, tempest, and decay. 
There is a book at the Grammar School 
in which visitors may inscribe their names. 
The first name written in it is that of 
Charles Dickens, the younger, dated De- 



134 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

cember 6, 1890. The record, from that 
date until June 22, 1894, fills seventy-two 
MS. pages, and contains about 1900 names. 
Among them are Virginia Bateman Comp- 
ton, January 14. 1891 ; Henry James, Janu- 
ary 15, 1891 ; Walter Besant, Otis Skinner, 
H. Beerbohm Tree, August 29, 1891 ; 
James Fernandez, Fred. Terry, Julia Neil= 
son, Isabel Bateman, October 25, 1891 ; 
Albert H. Smyth, John Addington Sy- 
monds, July, 1892, and Stopford A. Brooke, 
May 8, 1893. 

Some excitement was caused in Stratford, 
in June, 1894, by the discovery that the 
doors of the north porch of Trinity church 
had not only been removed from their 
place but had been sold, and for a time 
the matter was a theme of wonder. The 
doors had long been disused, but there they 
had hung for centuries, — useless but vener- 
able, — and nobody wished them to be dis- 
turbed. The Vicar of Stratford, however, 
caused them to be taken away. The porch 
is provided with an iron grill, and the 
removal of the doors, which had for years 
stood open, served to reveal more clearly 
the proportions and peculiarities of its 
interior. There was no complaint, and the 
doors might long have reposed, unnoted, 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 1 35 

among the rubbish in the churchyard, but 
for their sudden appearance as a commodity 
of commerce. That appearance was precip- 
itated by one of the church-wardens. A 
quantity of refuse wood and stone was to 
be sold ; the ancient oaken doors, massive 
and ponderous, stood in the way ; and so, 
with a word, they were dispatched. Such 
things are done more in heedlessness than 
with purpose. The most frugal-minded 
of church-wardens, considering what Strat- 
ford is and upon what mainly it thrives, 
would scarcely have sold those church 
doors, had he paused to reflect that the 
gaze of Shakespeare may have rested on 
them, and that therefore they belong to 
the story of the poet. Sold they were, and 
conveyed away, and but that the fact be- 
came public and attracted the attention of 
the Bishop of Worcester, they would not 
have come back. A mandate from that 
authority declared the sale invalid, the 
church-warden was compelled to recover 
the alienated property, and those relics of 
the beautiful church now once more repose 
in a shed in the churchyard. The incident 
was a sign of the spirit in which the affairs 
of the Shakespeare church have long been 
managed. 



I36 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

The ancient cottage at Wilmcote, in 
which dwelt Mary Arden, the mother of 
Shakespeare, has not been bought by the 
corporation of Stratford, but some day 
it will be, and then the cluster of the 
Shakespeare shrines will be complete. The 
cottage of Anne Hathaway was bought in 
1892, together with the old furniture and 
relics contained in it, — the latter being the 
property of Mrs. Mary Taylor Baker, who 
still resides in the cottage, and, notwith- 
standing infirmities of age, assists in the 
genial task of showing it to visitors. At 
the Shakespeare Birthplace the custo- 
dians are Miss Rebecca Florence Hancock 
and Miss Marie Louise Hancock, who as- 
sumed the office in May, 1893, and who 
have been successful in it, — fulfilling a 
difficult duty with patience, grace, and 
tact, and winning the favour of visitors 
and the pleased approval of the borough. 
Richard Savage, that excellent scholar and 
antiquary, so long associated with the Hen- 
ley street cottage, is still the librarian. 
All the Shakespeare Trusts are fortunate, 
and so is the public, in the presidency 
of Sir Arthur Hodgson, of Clopton, whose 
zeal is tireless and whose conservative ad- 
ministration tends to insure stability. The 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 1 37 

influence of Charles Edward Flower has 
been missed, and in many ways the death 
of that excellent man was an affliction to 
Stratford from which it will not soon re- 
cover. His grave is in the parish cemetery, 
and ever him the grass ripples and the 
flowers bloom in a wild profusion of 
beauty, like the good deeds that adorned 
his beneficent life, and like the blessings 
of love, gratitude, and honour that cluster 
round his name. 

Warwickshire is rich in relics. At War- 
wick Castle the visitor sees, or used to 
see, a fine portrait of Anne Boleyn, to- 
gether with one of her sister Mary, — the 
only one known to exist; armour that was 
worn by the great Montrose ; Vandyke's 
superb equestrian portrait of Charles the 
First ; a helmet that was worn by Oliver 
Cromwell, and a cast of Cromwell's dead 
face ; a trunk that was once the property 
of Queen Anne ; and, among many other 
mementos, a life-like and powerful por- 
trait of Wentworth, the puissant and re- 
nowned Earl of Strafford, whom Charles 
so strangely sacrificed to the Puritan rage. 
At Stratford there are relics of singular 
interest. One of them, shown to me by Sir 
Arthur Hodgson, of Clopton, is a prayer- 



I38 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

book, having on its title page the autograph 
of its former owner, Ambrose Eokewood, 
one of the conspirators in the Gunpowder 
Plot. At Clopton Rokewood lived, before 
the discovery of that iniquitous conspiracy, 
and to Clopton his prayer-book has found 
its way. His handwriting is quaint, char- 
acteristic, and handsome, and the book — 
a beautiful piece of printing — is in perfect 
condition. The other relic is a copy, in the 
handwriting of Dr. Johnson, of the letter 
that he sent to Dr. William Dodd, on the 
night before that unfortunate clergyman was 
hanged, for forgery [June 27, 1777]. The 
document will be found in Boswell's Life 
of Johnson. The copy is the property of 
Alderman R. M. Bird, of Stratford, to whose 
grandfather it was given by Dr. Johnson ; 
and equally in its perfect composure of 
benignant sentiment and its mellifluous 
style, it is, perhaps, the most superb re- 
corded example of absolute resignation to 
another man's woe. Dr. Johnson was a 
philosopher, and he never displayed the 
interesting fact more conspicuously than 
when he wrote to Dr. Dodd. 



February, 1895. — Americans who pos- 
sess pleasant memories of Stratford- upon- 



STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 1 39 

Avon have heard with sorrow of the death 
of the old parish-clerk and sexton of the 
Shakespeare church, William Butcher. 
He was a familiar figure in Stratford, 
and, in a special sense, he seemed appro- 
priate to the place. He was a man of 
venerable aspect, gentle disposition, and 
quaint manner. He moved about the old 
church in a slow, silent, decorous way, he 
knew its history, he loved and venerated 
its antiquities and its hallowing associations, 
and he impressed the beholder as a part of 
its traditions. He will be sadly missed 
by all who have known him and been 
accustomed to meet him in the Shake- 
spearian haunts. He was a kind, modest, 
unobtrusive, thoughtful man, a close ob- 
server, and he had a deeply reverent ap- 
preciation of the shrines among which 
he lived. Mr. Butcher had been parish- 
clerk of Stratford for thirty-five years. He 
died on February 20, 1895, aged sixty-six, 
and was buried in the Stratford cemetery. 
His father was for many years clerk of the 
venerable Guild church, — with which, as 
with Trinity church, Shakespeare was in- 
timately associated. His portrait by C. L. 
Mitchell, of Philadelphia, is excellent. 



140 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 

July, 1895. — The retirement of Mr. 
A. H. Wall from the office of Librarian of 
the Shakespeare Memorial should here be 
recorded. Mr. Wall retired in June, and 
was succeeded by Mr. William Salt Bras- 
sington. It should also be recorded that 
Stratford has suffered a loss in the with- 
drawal of Rev. R. S. de Courcy Laffan from 
the office of head-master of the Guild. Mr. 
Laffan has become President of Chelten- 
ham College, and he has been succeeded, 
in the School of King Edward the Sixth, by 
Rev. Edward J. W. Houghton, formerly of 
Bromsgrove. 

My latest visits to Stratford were made 
in September and October, 1895. Charle- 
cote house, hitherto accessible only to 
friends of the Lucy family, or by special 
permit, is now, at specified hours, and for 
a small fee, open to the visitor, and if, 
having viewed Warwick Castle, Compton 
Wynyate, near Banbury, and Charlecote, 
he fails to comprehend the stately home 
life of the English nobility in Shakespeare's 
day, he will have but himself to blame. 
The spacious halls and timbered and pan- 
elled ceilings at Charlecote are imposing 
and beautiful, and the art treasures are 
among the most precious in the kingdom. 



RELIC AND REVERIE. 141 



XIII. 
RELIC AND REVERIE. 

IN the visitors' book at the old Black 
Swan in York I read the following 
comprehensive words, appended to his 
name by a previous guest : k ■ Arrived at 5. 
Left at 5:05. Found all correct." There 
is a rapid way of looking at the world, 
with which many travellers appear to be 
contented, but it may be doubted whether 
the rapid way is always the wise way. 
Places no doubt there are through which 
the pilgrim should pass with all convenient 
speed, but, as a rule, every place, in an 
old country, is a place of interest, and that 
is especially true of England, where so 
much has been lost and won, so much done 
and suffered, such hallowing charms of 
poetry and such wealth of historic action 
diffused, that every countryside has its 
traditions, every temple its relics, and 
every city, town, and hamlet its legends, 
associations, and subtle, mysterious ro- 
mance. And certainly every place has its 



142 RELIC AND REVERIE. 

surprises, — as I could not choose but think 
when, in the course of a lonely walk in old 
Southampton, I found, in the lane called 
Back of the Walls, the burial-place of that 
paragon of humour, John O'Keeffe. No mer- 
rier soul ever bore the burdens of earthly- 
life, and even to come near his ashes was 
to be reminded of the joy and sunshine that 
are in the world, and how idle it is not to 
rejoice while yet the light endures. John 
O'Keeffe was a pioneer in that movement 
against the sentimental drama in England 
which culminated with the success of Gold- 
smith, Colman the younger, and Sheridan ; 
and, as a lover of the dramatic art, I 
felt that I had come upon the shrine of a 
benefactor. Everybody remembers Wild 
Oats, but few people know that the author 
of that gay comedy, and of about fifty 
others, rests in an obscure corner of South- 
ampton, that picturesque but slighted port 
of entry, through which everybody rushes 
and in which nobody is supposed to find 
a pleasure or a thought. He was an Irish- 
man, born in Dublin, in 1747 ; he had his 
career as actor and author ; he became 
blind about 1800 ; he enjoyed a small pen- 
sion during the last few years of his life, 
and he died in 1833, in his eighty-sixth 



RELIC AND REVERIE. I43 

year, and was buried in All Saints' ground, 
in the parish of St. Lawrence. I had 
passed many days in solitary rambling 
about Southampton, and had carefully 
explored it ; yet even then I stumbled 
upon a novelty, and many novelties, I 
doubt not, remain to be discovered there. 
The sights to which the stranger in that 
place is commonly directed are the church 
at Lyndhurst, not distant, adorned with the 
beautiful fresco, by Sir Frederick Leighton, 
of the Ten Virgins ; the wonderful antique 
beeches in the contiguous New Forest, where 
also is a stone, duly inscribed, that marks 
the spot on which king William Rufus was 
slain by the arrow of Walter Tyrrell ; the 
ruins of Beaulieu, melancholy relics of the 
dark and dangerous monarch, John ; and 
the broken, mouldering, picturesque frag- 
ments of Netley Abbey: but there is a 
pleasure in discoveries, that the routine 
spectacles never impart. 

The place of O'Keeffe's sepulchre is 
somewhat difficult of access, — the ceme- 
tery of All Saints, long since disused, 
being situated in rather a squalid region, 
and likewise being enclosed within a high 
wall. The key was obtained from the 
neighbouring abode of a butcher, some of 



144 RELIC AND REVERIE. 

whose sheep were grazing among the graves. 
The least of those animals was so tame that 
he came to me and put his nose into my 
hand. " I keep that there one," the serious 
butcher said, " to lead the others to death." 
No arrangement, surely, could be more 
harmonious with those grim surroundings. 
The graves in that forlorn yard are very 
numerous, and each one is not only marked 
by a tall perpendicular stone, but also cov- 
ered with a flat slab, the inscription being 
indented, and painted black. O'Keeffe's 
grave is close to the wall, and near the 
large wooden gate, in the southeast corner 
of the enclosure. The environment of shops 
and stables, the absence of foliage and 
flowers, and the presence of rubbish in- 
vested it with an air of extreme desolation; 
but all sepulchres, however they may be 
beautified, are unspeakably dreary, when 
you consider their stony and awful silence 
and muse upon the humour, grace, and joy 
that were hushed and hidden in their 
depths. The mourners for the sprightly 
dramatist have long since followed him to 
rest, and here as elsewhere charitable and 
consoling Time turns all things to peace. 
The inscription upon the tombstone, once 
viewed through tears, is read without a sigh. 



RELIC AND REVERIE. I45 

WITHIN THIS GRATE 

ARE DEPOSITED 

THE MORTAL REMAINS OF 

JOHN O'KEEFFE ESQ 

A PIOUS MEMBER OF THE 

HOLY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 

WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE 

IN THE 86TH YEAR OF HIS AGE. 

HE WAS BORN IN DUBLIN, IRELAND, 

THE 24th OF JUNE, 1747, 

AND DIED AT SOUTHAMPTON 

THE 4TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833. 

BLESSED BE HIS SPIRIT 

IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR 

JESUS CHRIST. 

THE ABOVE INSCRIPTION AVRITTEN 

AND THIS STONE PLACED 

TO HIS BELOVED MEMORY 

BY HIS ONLY DAUGHTER AND SURVIVING 

CHILD 

ADELAIDE o'KEEFFE. 



146 RELIC AND REVERIE. 

It was a surprise to find the grave of 
O'Keeffe in that by-way of Southampton, 
and yet it should not have been surprising, 
— for the graves of English actors are 
scattered far and wide over the earth. 
Susanna Cibber, Anne Bracegirdle, Anne 
Oldfield, Anne Street [the latter succes- 
sively Mrs. Dancer, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. 
Crawford], Thomas Betterton, Spranger 
Barry, Barton Booth, Samuel Foote, David 
Garrick, and John Henderson were buried 
in Westminster Abbey, or in its cloisters ; 
Mrs. Siddons and Miss Murray near the 
old parish church at Paddington ; Est- 
court, Haines, King, Kynaston, Macklin, 
and Wilks at Co vent Garden church ; Nell 
Gwyn and John Bannister at the church 
of St. Martin-in-the-Fields ; Suett in St. 
Paul's cathedral precinct ; Edmund Kean 
at Richmond [his grave is immediately 
under a closet in the church porch, in 
which are now kept brooms and dust-pans] ; 
the elder Mathews at Plymouth ; Mossop, 
Egerton, and Blanchard at Chelsea ; Powell 
and Mountfort in the old London church 
of St. Clement-le-Dane ; Mme. Vestris and 
Macready at Kensal Green; Mrs. Bland 
in St. Margaret's, Westminster ; John 
Palmer at Wooton, near Liverpool ; Quin 



RELIC AND REVERIE. 1 47 

at Bath Abbey ; Elliston at St. John's, 
Waterloo Road, London ; Mrs. Crouch at 
Brighton ; Laura Honey at Hampstead ; 
Tom D'Urfey in the ground of St. James's, 
London, near the Jermyn street gate ; Mrs. 
Davenport, Adelaide Neilson, Benjamin 
Webster, and Harry Beckett at Brompton 
cemetery ; Dora Jordan at St. Cloud ; John 
Kemble at Lausanne; and George Fred- 
erick Cooke in the churchyard of St. Paul's, 
at New York. Those are but a few of the 
once admired and honoured sovereigns of 
theatrical popularity. Each year adds to 
the dismal record : and yet it is not alto- 
gether dismal, for however much those 
fading names may bespeak the evanescence 
of achievement in art, at least they teach, 
— since each succeeding period brings its 
princes of the hour, — that the line of 
genius runs unbroken through the ages, and 
that art can never die. All the incitations 
to effort that man has devised serve only 
to employ his active faculties. He still 
keeps doing, and that is all, — for in this 
world there are no permanent results. All 
is change. The spirit, the something for 
which art is at once occupation, expression, 
and sustainment — that alone endures ; and 
there alone will permanence be found. 



I48 RELIC AND REVERIE. 

Many a walk in London has taught me 
that lesson, and much have I written 
about those London walks, — as the kind 
reader is aware. On May 24, 1894, I 
went into Gough Square, to look for the 
last time upon what was once the home of 
Dr. Johnson. One side of the square had 
already been demolished, and the busy 
hand of "improvement' 1 was visibly at 
work. The house of the great scholar will 
disappear, and with it will pass away a 
spring of many memories, well calculated 
to please and exalt a thoughtful mind. 
The past cannot, in material things, with- 
stand the present. This is a vital age, and 
one by one the London places associated 
with great names in English literature are 
changed beyond recognition or utterly de- 
stroyed. The luxurious hotel which has 
been opened, near the end of the Broad 
Walk, at Kensington, stands near the site 
of the old King's Arms Inn, which Thack- 
eray has artfully associated with the con- 
spiracy in Esmond. Thackeray's resi- 
dence in Yonge Street, Kensington Square, 
— where he lived when he was writing 
Esmond, — will soon be gone. Several 
years have passed since [in 1888-89], the 
front of the Byron house, 139 Piccadilly, 



RELIC AND REVERIE. 1 49 

where dwells Sir Algernon Borthwick, 
was so much changed that the observer 
could not recognise it for the place that 
Byron knew. " So runs the world away." 
In the pictorial edition of my Shake- 
speare's England [1893], on page 184, an 
engraving shows Green Arbour Court, 
which was once the abode of Goldsmith. 
An old resident of London, — Samuel Poyn- 
ter, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister 
at Law, — who chanced to see it, has sent to 
me an interesting note, which persons who 
care for literary antiquities will be glad to 
read : — 

"The three top windows on the right side, 
or else the three top windows facing the spec- 
tator, light Goldsmith's floor. One of the 
rooms nearest the angle — either the last room 
on the side of the court or the last room on the 
right-hand side of the central building — was 
his. I have often been in both rooms, and, 
indeed, in all the rooms on those corresponding 
floors. I was well acquainted with the floors 
just beneath the attic story, before the build- 
ings were razed, to clear the site for the Snow 
Hill station of the London, Chatham and Dover 
railway. That operation involved the demoli- 
tion of the old Break-Neck steps, a steep 
double set of stairs, two abrupt flights, with 
a landing midway, leading from the court into 



I50 RELIC AND REVERIE. 

a lane running down into Farringdon street. 
Formerly those steps ran down to the channel, 
or valley, of the Fleet River, to the eastern 
bank of that stream . That lane was absorbed, 
long ago, in the railway premises. The en- 
trance to Break-Neck steps is shown in the 
engraving, under the pent-house roof, to the 
right, facing the spectator, and, perhaps, 
Goldsmith's room was the one where the top 
window (save the attic window) shows, over 
the entrance to the steps. Originally a rope, 
slung on each side, served for a support, much 
needed, to the pedestrian, but, about half a cen- 
tury ago, the corporation substituted wooden 
rails, rounded and smooth, fixed by stanchions 
to the walls, which rose sheer, on each side, 
to a great height ; and in course of time those 
rails became finely polished by the hinder gar- 
ments of innumerable little boys who used to 
amuse themselves by sliding down them." 

The memory of Goldsmith chiefly sur- 
vives in the Temple, where once he dwelt 
and where still you may see his grave ; and 
to walk there is to think of that gentle 
spirit and of the rich legacy of beauty 
that his genius bequeathed. The precincts 
of the Temple are at all times peaceful, 
and whoever walks there is allured to 
a distant past. It was the abode of 
the Knights Templars, but after the ex- 



RELIC AND REVERIE. 151 

tinction of that order it was bought by 
lawyers [1340] arid converted into inns. 
Temple Bar, where now the Griffin stands, 
was built in 1672, and then Essex House, 
which lay outside of the Bar and which 
was a part of the residence, was called the 
Outer Temple, while the structures which lay 
within the Bar became known as the Middle 
Temple and the Inner Temple, — the latter 
being modern. Essex House, the abode of 
the unfortunate nobleman who rose against 
Queen Elizabeth and perished beneath the 
axe [1601], was long ago demolished, but 
the Inner and the Middle Temple remain, 
together with St. Mary's, the ancient and 
beautiful church of the Templars, dedicated 
by Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, in 
1185, — in which was heard the eloquent 
voice of Sherlock, and in which many a 
British worthy has worshipped, from Howe 
to Moore, from Blackstone to Charles 
Lamb, and from Congreve to Sheridan. 



152 A VALLEY OF PEACE. 



XIV. 

A VALLEY OP PEACE. . 



MENTONE, California. —The California 
season begins about the first of Decem- 
ber and lasts till about the end of March. 
It was my fortune to make acquaintance 
with the country at the wrong time, but, 
even at the wrong time, this land is one of 
extraordinary beauty. The place in which 
I write these words is a valley of peace. I 
came into it on a brilliant April morning, 
after a continuous railway journey of more 
than a hundred hours, and presently the 
world of my accustomed pursuits, with its 
turmoil and fever, seemed a dim and fading 
memory. Coming here from the North — 
along the comfortable line of the Atchison, 
Topeka and Santa Ee railroad — the pil- 
grim enters this valley through the Cajon 
Pass, a sinuous, rugged, fantastic rift in 
the majestic San Bernardino mountains — 
and at first he pauses at the slumberous old 



A VALLEY OF PEACE. 1 53 

town of San Bernardino. From that town, 
settled by the Spaniards many years ago, 
this cosey nook is distant, eastward, about 
twelve miles. Mentone is a suburb of the 
prosperous city of Redlands, — a wonder of 
enterprise and rapid growth, — and it lies 
at the eastern extremity of the vale, in the 
centre of a pleasant plain that is steeped in 
sunshine and glorious with flowers. Fancy 
could not picture, nor could taste devise, a 
sweeter refuge from care; 

The broad expanse of this valley is 
sparsely sprinkled with neat cottages and 
covered with groves of orange, blooming 
vineyards, meadows of sage, and a tossing 
and tumbling sea of wild flowers ; and all 
this shining luxuriance of green and purple 
and gold is haunted by the blackbird and 
the meadow lark, and swept by cool winds, 
that waft from every quarter the mingled 
fragrance of orange blossoms, roses, and 
the mountain-pine. Around it, at no great 
distance, and forming an almost continuous 
girdle, rise the grim mountains, — riven, 
crinkled, jagged, precipitous — Nature's 
everlasting citadel, surviving unchanged 
through countless ages, and brooding in 
stony silence on the transient life of man. 
Northward those mountains form a crescent. 



154 A VALLEY OF PEACE. 

In the east towers San Bernardino, crowned 
with snow. More distant rises the saddle- 
shaped crest of Grayback, mantled with 
the same delicate ermine. More distant 
still, and more in the south, crouches the 
lion-fronted majesty of San Jacinto, frown- 
ing on the snow-clad summits of San Anto- 
nio, superbly ominous in the west. It is 
only in the south that the ramparts are 
low, and in a short segment of the west, — 
where the waters of the Santa Ana river 
wind past blooming Eiverside, and glide by 
the Temescal mountains, to their home in 
the blue Pacific. Whichever way you look, 
your gaze reposes on the serrated outline 
and the haggard desolation of those eternal 
hills ; while above you, cloudless and stain- 
less, the sky is a blue crystal flooded with 
golden light. 

In Southern California, as in France, 
and in all wine-growing and citrus fruit 
countries, the traveller observes an excess 
of sunshine and a lack of foliage. Trees, 
indeed, there are — long lines of eucalyptus ; 
fringes of alder ; the graceful, drooping 
pepper, from Mexico ; the weird, ghost-like 
cypress of Italy ; the palm ; the olive ; and, 
of course, there are orange and lemon and 
fig trees, by thousands. Nevertheless, the 



A VALLEY OF PEACE. 1 55 

effect is nowhere produced of a country 
that is wooded. Except for agricultural 
results everything is "too much i' the 
sun, ' ' and the greatest luxury that you can 
have is an occasional day of gray twilight 
and drifting cloud. The orange, however, 
loves the sunshine and cannot have too 
much of it ; and in this land of eternal 
summer the orange is the king. To that 
monarch the inhabitants are loyal; for 
him they labour, and by him, for the most 
part, they subsist. One valley may speak 
for all. Southern California, throughout 
its extent, is composed of fruitful vales, 
nestled among rugged mountains and envi- 
roned with deserts, and everywhere her 
fertile plains are beautiful with the bright 
green of orange groves and radiant with 
flowers. Not very long ago those groves 
were shining with innumerable globes of 
gold. To-day they are white with starry 
blossoms, that sweeten the air for miles 
around, and all the world seems gay with 
the happiness of a bridal feast. As I drove 
through the long vistas of cypress and palm 
and olive that make the famous Magnolia 
avenue of Eiverside, and saw around me 
palaces, on every hand, set in emerald 
orange groves and draped with roses, I 



I56 A VALLEY OF PEACE. 

thought of our Atlantic tempests as a half- 
forgotten dream, and scarcely could realise 
that our country is not, always and every- 
where, a paradise. 

One day in this valley is so like another, 
and all days are so uneventful, that you 
might soon lose account of time. About 
four o'clock the morning light begins to glow, 
over the ridge of the eastern mountains. 
A few ribs of slate-coloured cloud in the fir- 
mament are slowly changed to rose and then 
to gold. Far in the west the shadows steal 
upward, and the foothills of San Antonio 
catch the gathering and growing brightness 
of the dawn. Then, suddenly, a ball of 
fire, the sun leaps above the crest of Gray- 
back, and the whole vale is filled with light. 
All this while, from distant groves and out 
of waste places on the wide and lonely 
moorland, the calls of many birds are 
wafted, in melodious tumult. Here and 
there, joyous with freedom, a squirrel or a 
rabbit leaps up among the brush, and scur- 
ries away. The quail pipes in his cover. 
The buzzard sails high in air. A thin, 
lace-like mist, drifting along the mountain- 
sides, is slowly melted away. The wild 
flowers, in every direction, unclose their 
petals and clothe the sunny plain in odor- 



A VALLEY OF PEACE. 1 57 

oils garments of yellow and purple, and 
white and lavender, and all that copious and 
wild profusion of colour which Nature, 
and Nature alone, can make harmonious 
and delightful. As day deepens and the 
warmth increases, the mountains, in their 
lonely splendour, stand forth like crags of 
ebony, veined with emerald, against the 
sapphire of a cloudless summer sky. No 
sound breaks the stillness save the rippling 
song, — frequently repeated and almost 
always the same, — of the brown meadow 
lark, or the querulous, triple note of the 
quail, mingled with the distant murmur 
of a brawling stream ; and if you pause 
in your ramble through the slumbering 
meadows, where the candlestick and the 
pear-shaped cactus are beautiful with 
myriad roses of pink and yellow, the place 
is so still and so lonely that swift, stealthy 
lizards will glide across your path, and the 
harmless gopher-snake pursue his prey, and 
the droll little horned toad come forth to 
look and listen. There is a great heat 
between four and six o'clock in the after- 
noon, but it is not distressing, and it serves 
only to deepen the vast tranquillity of the 
mountain heights, upon which your gaze 
might dwell unwearied forever. As the 



I58 A VALLEY OF PEACE. 

sun begins to decline, the wind blows cool 
from the west ; the wilderness of flowers 
seems to fade ; the far-stretching fields 
grow lonesome and desolate ; and the 
mountains, more huge and more tremen- 
dous in the impending gloom, put on an 
awful pageantry of light and shadow, myste- 
rious grandeur, and inaccessible repose. The 
sunset comes quickly. The orb of golden 
fire falls in an instant behind the colossal 
head of San Antonio, and then the whole 
Sierra Madre range looms in purple bastions 
against the yellow sky — its long, sinuous, 
gigantic outline sharply defined and stu- 
pendously magnificent. There is a lovely 
gloaming, and, long after the wide valley 
has darkened, the sunset light lingers on 
the high western slopes of San Bernardino 
in the east, slowly fading upward, — like 
the glory of a beautiful life that has come 
to its end on earth, yet, for a time, will 
seem to cast its blessing backward out of 
heaven. Then the night descends and the 
sky is full of stars, — larger and more near 
than in our northern clime, — and only the 
distant lights of the town of San Bernardino 
shining, innumerable, at the foot of the 
western mountains, suggest the presence of 
human life ; and you are lulled to sleep by 



A VALLEY OF PEACE. 1 59 

the gentle music of the rushing river, and 
by winds that are laden with balm. 

Scenes of that character suggest a con- 
tented and peaceful community — and such 
it is. There may be fever and action in the 
great cities of California ; there is nothing 
but tranquillity here. Throughout these 
valleys the work of life proceeds silently. 
Little by little the waste places are 
redeemed ; the bloom of cultivation creeps 
up to the base of the mountains ; villas and 
cottages are reared upon the foothills and 
in the plains; and the long, white roads 
stretch afar off, through fields that are 
green wich barley and yellow with ripening 
hay ; the neat schoolhouse and the pretty 
church peep forth from groves of alder ; 
and, all around, you may discern the fruits of 
enterprise without its clamour and the calm 
of patience without its melancholy. This 
people has only to labour and to wait. The 
future — not distant — greets it, with both 
hands full of blessings. Scarce a quarter 
of a century has passed since all this region 
was a wilderness. To-day there is not in 
the world a scene of softer grace or more 
radiant promise. 



l6o MOUNTAIN DAYS. 



XV. 

MOUNTAIN DATS. 

MENTONE, California. — There is a 
change in the valley as the summer 
deepens. The heat, by day, grows more 
intense. The wild flowers are less abun- 
dant. The orange blossoms gradually 
disappear. The roads are deep in dust. 
The sun rises like a fierce flame, and holds 
its course with unrelenting vigour through 
a perfectly cloudless sky. The broad 
expanse of moorland, covered with brush, 
shrivels in the heat. Chirping sounds, 
made by unseen insects, are continual. 
Every place is infested with flies, and the 
scattering of water is the chief occupation 
of the inhabitants. The heat, I am assured, 
will increase, and the mercury will some- 
times stand at more than a hundred degrees. 
It is only toward sunset and in the night 
that life becomes comfortable. As the sun 
sinks the air grows cool, and about the 
middle of the night the wind is cold, and 



MOUNTAIN DAYS. l6l 

often is full of moaning sounds, — as if a 
storm were coming ; but no storm comes. 
On the lofty summits of Grayback and San 
Bernardino a little snow still lingers, but, 
all around, the mountains, veiled in a thin 
blue haze, are wearing their mantle of 
summer rest. The birds are nesting, and 
are less vocal than they were of late, — the 
blithe little meadow lark being almost the 
only one who continues to sing ; and even 
he is seldom heard. It happens to be the 
period of the full moon, and that planet, 
rising above a line of cloven and treeless 
hills, toward the south-east, casts a soft 
splendour over the whole valley, concealing 
its every blemish and making it like a lake 
of silver, dappled with little islands, serene 
within a mountain girdle of granite and 
ebony. 

It is for sunset and evening, accordingly, 
that the dreamer waits. The parched and 
shimmering landscape waits for them also, 
and will welcome their approach. As the 
long shadows begin to slope to the east- 
ward, the hollows among the foothills and 
the ravines in the mountains grow dark and 
cool. Then the trees that fringe the sinu- 
ous watercourses sway and murmur in the 
rising breeze. The light grows softer and 



1 62 MOUNTAIN DAYS. 

fades away. A thin gray gauze creeps 
along the mountain-side, and the moorlands 
beneath are darkened. Soon it is evening, 
and over the desolate plain floats the 
mournful call of the owl, while far over- 
head, in a pale blue sky, without a cloud, a 
single star steals slowly into view — shy 
herald of all the host of heaven. 

Amid these scenes, and notwithstanding 
the rigours of heat and dust, the soundless 
industry of the inhabitants of this region 
steadily continues. All day long you may 
see labourers at work in the fields — direct- 
ing and superintending the flow of the 
water, which at intervals is delivered upon 
all the orange farms, and which is their 
safeguard and nourishment. Sometimes 
that labour of irrigation proceeds until a 
late hour of the night, and all around you 
may discern stars of light, — the lanterns of 
the toilers of the orchard, — flitting about 
in the wide, remote, and dusky plains. 
At all times a picture, this landscape is 
especially pictorial under a starlit sky or in 
the silver lustre of the moon — for then the 
encircling mountain range is one vast mass 
of confused and broken shadows, while its 
high serrated outline stands clearly revealed 
against a dome of sable, and the engirdled 



MOUNTAIN DAYS. 1 63 

plain seems a glimmering waste of sea, 
with here and there a craft at anchor, and 
with solitary beacon-fires on its distant, 
nnknown shores. Persons who chiefly 
value the pleasures of society and the 
pursuits of active life would find themselves 
lost, in such a place as this ; but the mind 
that loves to brood upon Nature, and is 
willing to learn the lesson of personal insig- 
nificance, may here find serene pleasure and 
lasting benefit. And what a precious lesson 
it is to learn ! In all my wanderings, — 
and they have been far and long, — nothing 
has impressed me more painfully than the 
ignorance, folly, and capricious instability 
of popular applause, as set against the 
trouble that men take to win it. There is 
but one refuge. 

The bard of Rydal Mount spake well — 
But Nature for herself speaks too, 

Nor any secret had to tell 
To him, that's hid from me or you. 

For us she gems her sapphire sky, 
For us her mountains cleave the air ; 

And he that sees with Nature's eye 
Sees all things good and all things fair. 



164 SEASHORE PICTURES. 



XVI. 

SEASHORE PICTURES. 

CORONADO, SanDiego, California.— The 
sky was a vast dome of blue crystal 
and all space seemed flooded with sunshine 
as I rolled down the valley, at morning, 
making my course for the sea. A fresh 
breeze was stirring in the spires of the eu- 
calyptus and in the feathery, pendent stream- 
ers of the pepper, and among the radiant 
flowers on many a blooming lawn, and over 
many a field of golden hay, and the air was 
laden with fragrance, from oleander, mag- 
nolia, and heliotrope, and countless blossom- 
ing shrubs that make this region one field 
of costly beauty. The trail that I followed 
runs west and south, past Redlands, on her 
stately heights, and Riverside, in her fertile 
vale, and the Temescal mountains, and the 
cornfields and orange groves of Santa Ana, 
and so onward toward the ocean. All along 
the way from Orange to Capistrano I saw 
the massive Santa Ana range, with Santiago 



SEASHORE PICTURES. 1 65 

at its head. Between those mountains and 
the sea the bottom lands are exceptionally 
level, and much of the territory is devoted 
to hay and grain. At El Toro the pilgrim 
thinks of beautiful Modjeska, whose ranch 
is in the Santiago Canon, about twenty 
miles to the east, and whose name and pres- 
ence have cast a glamour over all this coun- 
try side. Signs of the sea have been growing 
frequent, and at Capistrano, where there 
is an old mission church, half in ruins, its 
welcome proximity is evident in the cool 
wind, the saline odour, the sandy soil, and 
the hardy vegetation. A little further, and 
through a broad vista of golden meadow, 
I saw for the first time the great white 
breakers and the blue desert of the magnifi- 
cent Pacific. It is at San Juan that the Santa 
F6 route strikes the coast, and from that 
point almost to San Diego it skirts the shore 
and runs through scenery as sweet and gen- 
tle, as breezy and romantic, as ever soothed 
the senses or bewitched the mind. Often, 
indeed, the country is bleak, from lack of 
trees : but the grass is beautiful, with hues 
of russet and orange ; the air is scented 
with herb-like odours that are full of health ; 
on one side the great ocean surges and spar- 
kles in shimmering silver, and on the other 



l66 SEASHORE PICTURES. 

side the hills roll away in billows of gold. 
At this season of the year the prevalent 
colour is yellow ; in the winter it will toe 
green. At all times the scene is a pageant. 
The general character of the landscape 
in Southern California is amply and truth- 
fully denoted in the objects that fill the 
picture as you make this journey toward 
the Mexican frontier. It is a landscape 
of wonderful amplitude and rich variety, 
and the sight of it at once toroadens percep- 
tion and dignifies thought. The life of the 
inhabitants may be frivolous or may be fine ; 
the life of Nature is stupendous, and every- 
thing here has been made for grandeur. 
The mountains and the ocean, monitors of 
human insignificance and emblems of eter- 
nity, are here closely confronted ; and, how- 
ever much the spirit of the spectacle may be 
modified by inferior adjuncts, the dominant 
note of it is sublimity. Gentler aspects of 
the scenery mingle with its stateliness, but 
no natural element of it is trivial or mean ; 
and, while its majesty inspires awe, its va- 
riety is a continual delight. At a distance 
the mountain-peaks loom through a pale 
blue mist. More near, their craggy, wooded 
slopes, silent and grim in the sunshine, 
gleam through vistas in the lower hills, — 



SEASHORE PICTURES. 167 

range beyond range, reaching backward 
and upward to the unclouded sapphire of 
the summer sky. On the foothills, and in 
the meadows that fringe the sea, the dry 
russet grass is thickly sown with golden tar- 
weed. In the shaded and moist ravines 
the trees and shrubbery are rank and green. 
Kivers, that soon will be copious and precip- 
itate torrents, flow now in thin streams, 
through sand and rocks, in the shallows of 
their arid beds. Groves of the live-oak are 
frequent, and sentinel lines of the Lom- 
bardy poplar, and clumps of eucalyptus, 
with here and there a cottage ; while wheat- 
fields commingle with fruit orchards, salt 
marshes with deserts of brush, patches of 
barley with acres of pasture, vineyards with 
almost boundless tracts of corn, and beds 
of bulrush with a wilderness of cactus and 
sage. Cattle feed in the low ground, and 
over it there are occasional flights of birds. 
In some of the meadows the hay is stacked 
in prodigious heaps, and, since months pass 
with scarce one drop of rain , it will remain 
there, uncovered and safe. The hay-fields 
are many and broad, and often, as you look 
upon the distant hay-cart and the workers 
around it, in the sunny plain, you might 
think yourself in Warwickshire or York- 



l68 SEASHORE PICTURES. 

shire — but that you miss the opulent Eng- 
lish foliage, the gray church tower, and the 
far-off, floating music of the chimes. At 
intervals the brilliant green of the alfalfa 
lights up the yellow expanse. The rocks 
shine with a delicate flowering sea-moss. 
A lone tree upon the hilltop catches your 
passing vision. A ruined adobe house gleams 
from its nest of scarlet geranium and droop- 
ing willow. A little wooden town drifts 
by, — still and seemingly unpeopled, — on 
the sunny western slope that fronts the sea. 
It is a world of pictures and of dreams, and 
over it the spirit of the mountain shares 
dominion with the wizard of the deep. 
Miles of white beach extend along this 
coast, on which the vast Pacific breaks con- 
tinually, in the endless music of foaming 
billows and dashing surge. All the land 
seems to flower into gold, while out over 
the ocean the blue of heaven darkens into 
purple and the horizon is an endless line of 
mystery, — at once allurement and menace, 
— the everlasting symbol of human fate. 

Oceanside ought to be a favourite resort. 
The facilities for surf-bathing are excep- 
tionally good ; the hotel is surrounded with 
flowers ; the place is free from crowds, and 
the adjacent country is romantic and beau- 



SEASHORE PICTURES. 169 

tiful. The surges of the Pacific foam un- 
checked upon the coast, — the broad, white 
beach extending, north and south, as far 
as eyes can see, — and the high banks that 
front the ocean are thickly covered with 
breezy sage-brush, grass, and star-like, 
yellow blooms. Sand and marsh inter- 
mingle, and at various points the water 
runs into deep fissures in the land. Live- 
oak trees, many and strange, are scattered 
around, and under them the lazy cattle 
couch or feed. Seaward there is an in- 
terminable field of blue and silver, out of 
which, at the near margin, the breakers roll 
continually, in three or four broad bands 
of snowy foam, — an incessant motion and 
a perpetual voice. Landward, beyond the 
plains and the little wooden town, rise the 
wrinkled hills, almost treeless ; and far 
above those hills, dimly visible, the gaunt 
Sierras show like guardian ghosts. 

Eastward, and inward, from Oceanside — 
which sleeps on this delicious coast, about 
midway between San Juan and San Diego 
— there is a drive across the mountains that 
no traveller should omit to take. The ascent 
is gentle but, even from the first height, you 
gain a view of the Pacific that amazes you 
by its extent and overwhelms you with its 



I70 SEASHORE PICTURES. 

beauty. Soon, however, the sea is hidden 
and your gaze is completely fascinated by 
the charm of the land. You are on a road 
that winds and dips and rises, yet keeps ever 
at the crest of the range, and on every side 
you are environed with golden hills and 
ample valleys, clad mostly in russet and 
yellow verdure that ripples in wind and sun, 
and given over to the cattle and the birds. 
Here and there you may, perhaps, discern 
a farmhouse, far down in the lowlands ; but 
almost the only visible sign of human life 
is the distant railway track, winding out 
through a hill-gap, from Carlsbad, toward 
Escondido, — " the hidden one," — twenty 
miles away. Nowhere in my wanderings 
have I been conscious of greater airiness 
and magnificent amplitude than there, on 
the brink of the great valley of San Luis 
Rey. Far to the north, indistinct yet 
clearly outlined in the gauze-like mist, ap- 
pear the giant peaks of San Jacinto and 
San Bernardino ; but those are cloud-effects 
rather than ■ substance. The nearer hills 
bound the prospect, — and a fairer one it 
would indeed be hard to find. The great 
river of San Luis, when I saw it, had 
dwindled almost to a silver thread ; but its 
bed and its banks were glorious with colour, 



SEASHORE PICTURES. 171 

and its winding vale, for many miles, was a 
wilderness of foliage and flowers. No one 
who cares for landscape could fail to mark 
with delight the vast extent of that pictorial 
valley, the rich slopes and swells of the land, 
the numerous adjacent ravines, the colours 
of the grass, and the lonely trails that wind 
over the hilltops and disappear in the mys- 
terious distance. North of the river-bed 
are four considerable lakes, and those were 
gleaming in the sunshine like sheets of sil- 
ver. Amid those surroundings it was easy 
to understand why the Spanish monks, who 
came there a hundred years ago or more, 
chose that vale for the establishment of 
their mission and the consecration of their 
church. A portion of that church still stands 
and still is devoted to the Catholic service ; 
but, for the most part, the mission is in ruins. 
Its cloisters must have been extensive. 
They are roofless now, yet sixty arches re- 
main — built around three sides of the 
enclosure, wherein heaps of rubbish are 
mouldering, and grass and wild flowers 
grow, in rank luxuriance. The church was 
built well. The short tower is still solid, 
and the nave, with five pillars on either side, 
and with tarnished frescoes upon its interior 
surface, is still intact. One transept, the 



172 SEASHORE PICTURES. 

north one, is entirely gone ; the other is in 
ruins and is closed. In many apertures 
of those old walls the doves have nested, 
and the place is so lonely that owls flit 
over it by day, and even the timid quail is 
careless of approach. I sat for a long time 
upon a bench in front of the rude altar, and 
heard the chirping and twittering of many 
swallows that haunt about those ruins, and 
the sound of priestly voices, intoning mass 
in a cottage near by ; and, in the chill and 
solemn silence, I felt once more the sense 
of that dignity of the spiritual life — that 
celestial exaltation of the soul — which 
comes only from communion with thoughts 
of another world, and tender, reverent mem- 
ories of those whom we have loved and lost 
in this. 

South of the church, nestled close to its 
yellow walls, is a little burial-place, in which 
a few brick tombs and fenced enclosures, 
marked with wooden crosses, are overgrown 
with weeds and covered with dust. Upon 
one small marble I read the words ' ' Our 
darling," and knew the meaning of that 
heart-broken cry. Go where you will, there 
is no corner of this world that gives a ref- 
uge from sorrow, — and neither is there 
any place so remote and solitary as not to 



SEASHORE PICTURES. 1 73 

know the trouble of human ambition, strife, 
and wrong. Even in that lonely dell, where 
religious devotion broods in awful silence 
over ruin and decay, as you look upward to 
the crest of the golden hills, you may see 
a group of century plants, marking the spot 
where batteries were placed to subdue the 
mission — then fortified — after a battle 
at the contiguous hamlet of Buena Vista. 
The scene of that victory — a peaceful 
grain-ranch now — is only a few miles 
away, southeastward from San Luis. It 
required no effort of the imagination to 
cover those hills once more with trium- 
phant soldiers, to hear the blare of trumpets, 
and to see the banners flashing in the sun. 



TRIBUTES. 



The sketch of George Arnold, — reprinted here 
by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co., — was originally published as a preface to 
his Poems, collected and edited by one, in 1866 and 
1867. It has been condensed and improved. 

The sketch of Fits- James O'Brien, — reprinted 
here by permission of Messrs. Charles Scribner' s 
Sons, — was originally ptiblished as a preface to 
his Poems and /Stories, collected and edited by me 
in 1881, and issued by Messrs. James B. Osgood, & 
Co. That book has long been out of print, but the 
stories contained in it are published by the house 
of Scribner. 

The remarks on Charles Dawson Shanly, Rufus 
Choate, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, — reprinted 
here by permission of the New York Tribune, with 
which journal I have had the honour of being 
intimately associated since August, 1865, — were 
published, at different times in that paper. The 
eulogy of Holmes was printed on October 8, 189U, 
the morning after he died. 

My poem now called On the Verge was orig- 
inally called Into the Dark, and, with that title, it 
was published, May, 1895, in Scribner'' s Magazine. 
176 



TRIBUTES. I77 



XVII. 

TRIBUTES. 

George Arnold. 



THIS author was dear to me as a comrade, 
and I do not pretend to speak impar- 
tially of him. During six years it was my 
fortune to be intimately associated with him, 
and to participate in many of his pleasures 
and in some of his sorrows. Tenderness for 
his memory and grief for his loss may colour 
the language of this tribute. Affection is 
not critical. But, whatever be the faults 
of this memorial sketch, I believe that the 
appreciative reader of Arnold's poems will 
feel them to be emblems of genius and of 
a winning character. 

George Arnold was born in Bedford street, 
New York, on June 24, 1834, and he died 
at Strawberry Earms, Monmouth County, 
New Jersey, on November 9, 1865. His 
parents resided in New York till he was 



I78 TRIBUTES. 

three years old, when they removed to Alton, 
Illinois, where he passed twelve years of 
his happy boyhood, — years diversified by 
exercise and study, and blessed by free 
communion with nature, amid some of her 
most picturesque and inspiring scenery. 
There he laid the foundation of that love 
and knowledge of natural things which he 
manifested in after years. He never went 
to school. His education was conducted 
by his parents, from whom he learned, in a 
good home, the lessons of truth and the 
principles of conduct which are the suf- 
ficient basis of an honourable life. Those 
teachings he never forgot, and, though his 
later years were not unblemished with error, 
he was, from first to last, in all things and 
to all persons, manly and sincere. Nor was 
that result altogether due to early training. 
Simplicity and truthfulness were natural to 
him. He was a gentle person, and his im- 
pulses were generous and good. 

In the summer of 1849 his parents moved 
from Alton to Strawberry Farms, New 
Jersey. A "Fourierite Phalansterie " had 
been established there, but, at that time, it 
was in decay. Residing there for three 
years, seeing many social reformers, — some 
of them rational and some of them eccentric, 



TRIBUTES. 179 

— and hearing much of social reform, his 
impressible mind took a philosophic turn, 
and began to ruminate upon the contrast 
between things as they are and as they ought 
to be. That habit of thought continued to 
the end of his life. He never was a re- 
former and for professional reformers he 
had an aversion. His conviction appeared 
to be, — and it is, perhaps, as sound as any 
current doctrine on this subject, — that "the 
world is out of joint," and that no human 
power can set it right. His philosophy how- 
ever, or his lack of it, is immaterial, and I 
refer to his early acquaintance with doc- 
trines of reform, merely to explain the bias 
toward speculation which appears in some 
of his poems, notably in Wool-Gathering , 
and also his independent custom of viewing 
all subjects in the light of common sense. 
In the autumn of 1852, having shown a 
preference and aptitude for painting, he was 
placed in the studio of a portrait-painter, in 
New York, and that was the beginning of 
his career. Experience proved that he had 
mistaken his vocation. He became a good 
draughtsman, he manifested skill and taste, 
and his faculty for sketching landscapes 
grew with his years and afforded him much 
enjoyment ; but that was all. Several of 



l8o TRIBUTES. 

his friends possess sketches that he made, 
chiefly in water-colours, which, if less com- 
plete as works of art, are often as char- 
acteristic of their author as even his best 
poems. Such a sketch is before me, as I 
write these words. It shows a square, in 
an old German city, around which are quaint 
houses, with diamond-lattices, lancets, and 
gargoyles. In the background a cathedral 
lifts its spire toward the blue sky of summer, 
flecked with clouds of fleece. A lame beg- 
gar halts in the shadow. Hooded monks 
stand apart, conversing. The scene is slum- 
berous, poetic, and suggestive. But it was 
oftener with the sweet or stern aspects of 
nature that his fancy held genial commun- 
ion. He loved to think of still woodland 
places ; of mossgrown rocks, and the bright 
green of creeping vines ; of the music of 
lonely brooks; of thick-clustering, dewy 
roses ; of the burnished glories of autumn 
woods ; of the wind among the pine trees, 
on sombre autumn nights ; of lonely beaches, 
whereon forever echoes the ancient, solemn 
dirge of the sorrowing, desolate ocean, mind- 
ful not alone of its mysterious grief, but of 
missing ships, and vanished forms, and 
"wrecks far out at sea." His poems mani- 
fest those moods of his fancy, and those 



TRIBUTES. l8l 

moods also tinged his sketches and gave 
them character. But he did not succeed as 
a painter of faces and figures, and so he 
abandoned the brush. His early studies 
of painting were not wasted. Loving the 
art, and knowing its technicalities, he sub- 
sequently became an expert commentator 
upon pictures. His remarks on paintings 
are animated by sympathy with high ideals, 
cordial appreciation of merit, and contempt 
for mere prettiness. He was competent to 
the performance of the duty of a reviewer, 
and he faithfully served the art in which he 
had once hoped to win distinction. 

The transition from the brush to the pen, 
not uncommon, was with him inevitable. 
Though his temperament was dream-like, 
his will never became the slave of dreams. 
He laid down the brush with a sigh, but he 
laid it down, and thereafter, to the end, he 
worked with the pen, bearing the sorrows, 
surmounting the obstacles, and enjoying 
some of the pleasures of the noble profes- 
sion of letters. His literary career lasted 
about twelve years. In that time he wrote, 
with fluency and versatility, stories, sketches, 
essays, poems, comic and satirical verses, 
reviews of books and of pictures, editorial 
articles, jokes, and paragraphs, everything 



1 82 TRIBUTES. 

for which there was a demand in the literary 
magazines and in journalism. The quantity 
of writing that he produced is surprisingly 
large. Much of it is ephemeral. He was 
obliged to combine journalism with litera- 
ture, and in journalism, sufficient unto the 
day is the article thereof. But while he 
wrote much for the moment he wrote things 
that will endure. The original mind, the 
kind heart, and the impulse of genius often 
gave accidental value to even his lightest 
compositions. The reader of his McArone 
Papers, begun in Vanity Fair, November 
24, 1860, and continued, in that and other 
journals, with slight intermissions, until 
October 14, 1865, will especially appreciate 
this truth. Those papers, in which the 
Chevalier McArone records his exploits and 
reflections (excepting those written toward 
the close of the author's life, which are 
deeply pathetic) aim to excite mirth by their 
preposterous absurdity ; yet beneath their 
sunny vein of nonsense runs a current of 
thought and sentiment, revealing the con- 
victions and ardent sympathy of a strong 
nature. Similar indications appear in his 
stories. The poems, of which a volume made 
and arranged by me contains a selection, 
published in 1866, show their author more 



TRIBUTES. 183 

distinctly. Subtle knowledge of the heart, 
quick sympathy with ideals of purity, inno- 
cence, and beauty, deep love for nature, 
combined with knowledge of the subject, 
fine appreciation of the holiest emotions, 
acquaintance with grief, tender humanity 
underlying a keen intellect, playful humour 
closely blended with pathos, religious senti- 
ment, a manly spirit, proud, aspiring, and ca- 
pable of endurance and resignation, — these 
qualities of mind and character are mani- 
fested in the poems, which, moreover, are, 
with scarcely an exception, finished with 
severe taste. They do not attempt high, 
imaginative flights. They sprang from the 
writer's heart, and they were uttered natu- 
rally, in simple music. 

Arnold wrote for bread, and he sold his 
writings to whoever would buy them, and 
it was noticeable, especially in his later 
years, that he had no care for literary rep- 
utation. He was industrious, in order 
that he might be independent. He lived 
simply, because he could not afford to live 
otherwise. He was not deficient in luxu- 
rious and eccentric tastes, or in the careless 
liberality of jovial good-fellowship ; yet he 
accomplished much work, and he did it 
faithfully and well. In this respect, and 



1 84 TRIBUTES. 

in all respects, his private life was governed 
by strict integrity. He had a wide knowl- 
edge of the world, and he wisely chose to 
hold his place in it by ability, industry, 
honour, and cheerfulness. The principal 
motive of his conduct was a desire to be, 
rather than to seem, — to develop his char- 
acter, deserve the love of friends, surround 
himself with cheerfulness, and thus make 
the best of the comedy of life ; and in that 
he succeeded. Those who knew him well 
loved him dearly. They knew that he was 
genuine, that he scorned imposture, and 
that his friendship, not idly bestowed, was, 
when once given, steadfast and true, 
whether in sunshine or storm. This genu- 
ine character, revealed through a cheerful 
temperament, — all the more winning for 
its latent gravity, — was the source of his 
peculiar personal influence, and of his ca- 
pacity to inspire affection. He attracted the 
good side of every nature. Those who 
came in contact with him exhibited them- 
selves to the best advantage. He had no 
conceit of intellectual superiority, nor did 
he flaunt a quill in the face of society. 
His manners had repose, and something of 
the autumnal ripeness and beauty which he 
so much loved, and of which he has written 



TRIBUTES. 185 

so well. Even his affectations were not un- 
pleasant. He liked to represent himself as 
an utterly selfish and heartless man, and to 
attribute selfish motives to everybody, and 
he liked to suggest the ludicrous side of 
serious subjects, and to chill the ardour of 
sentiment with a cold spray of cynicism. 
But he wore the mask of the cynic with an 
ill grace, and toward the last he laid it 
aside. Gentle, simple, and affectionate, 
such he appeared to me, in those last days, 
and such I believe him to have been. 

It is pleasant to remember that the clos- 
ing days of his life were passed. in the 
society of dear friends, and that he entered 
into his rest amid scenes that were hallowed 
to him by tender associations of a happy 
and hopeful youth. His custom, for several 
years, had been to spend a part of the sum- 
mer and autumn at Strawberry Farms. To 
that place he went, in August, 1865, having 
been ill for some time. His face, though it 
wore a weary look, gave no sign of ap- 
proaching death ; yet his thoughts had 
dwelt often upon that solemn theme, and I 
think he knew that the end was near. In 
spite of sickness and pain, his habitual 
mood remained calm and cheerful. He 
wrote for the Press, till within four weeks 



1 86 TRIBUTES. 

of his death. The last prose article that 
he wrote was the last of the McArone 
Papers, humorously yet sadly expressive 
of a wish to be an Old Lady. The last 
poem that he sent for publication was one 
called The Matron Year. At the last, he 
amused himself by writing songs, — care- 
less lyrics, not intended for print. He had 
a happy facility for composing melodies to 
match his words, and he used often to 
sing his songs. They were simple and 
sweet, and he sang them sweetly. Many a 
day, in that golden autumn which was his 
last on earth, he sat alone in the parlour of 
the old house at Strawberry Farms, playing 
the piano and singing softly to himself. I 
picture him thus, as the end drew nigh, — 
his handsome face calm with the repose of 
resignation, his gentle, blue eyes full of 
kind, sad light, his voice, soft, tremulous, 
and low, breathing out his glad hymn of 
faith in the protecting love of the Divine 
Father : — 

"To-day a song is on my lips; 

Earth seems a paradise to me, — 
For God is good, and lo! my ships 
Are coming home from sea." 



TRIBUTES. 187 

They Lave come home now, — all the high 
hopes, all the ventures of aspiration, that 
his soul sent forth, in the holy season of 
innocent youth. His dreams of happiness 
are all realized ; his life, that was broken on 
earth, is fulfilled in heaven. 



II. 

In the foregoing sketch of George Arnold, 
prefixed to his hook called Drift, I have re- 
corded the events of his life and described 
his character. In that volume are poems 
which show the nobleness, simplicity, sen- 
timent, winning quaintness, and half-cheer- 
ful, half-sad repose, that were blended in 
him, and that endeared him to his friends. 
His genius was manifested in various as- 
pects by other works. The second volume 
of his writings, published in 1867, and after- 
wards combined with the first, comprises a 
number of his poems found after the com- 
pilation of Drift, together with some of 
his humorous and satirical verse. There 
remain his humorous prose writings, his 
tales and sketches, and those pieces of his 
comic verse for which he made drawings, 
and which would lose their significance if 
printed apart from the illustrations. Upon 



l88 TRIBUTES. 

these volumes rests George Arnold's title to 
an honourable place among the poets of 
America. 

To view the poems with the eyes of affec- 
tion is, perhaps, to see in them a higher 
value than they possess, but, anticipating 
the verdict of the impartial future, I believe 
that Arnold will be recognised as a poet, — 
as one who knew, worshipped, and could 
interpret the beautiful; who understood, 
by poetic intuition, the heart of man and 
the sanctity of nature ; who felt the deep 
tragedy of human life, and heard the voice 
of God in rustling leaf, and rippling brook, 
and murmuring surges of the sea ; who 
sympathised with the aspirations of hu- 
manity, desiring that happiness might pre- 
vail as the fruit of justice ; who uttered, in 
admirable forms of art, the truth which he 
saw and felt, and the ideal for which he 
longed ; and who preserved, through all the 
vicissitudes of life, a simple mind, a true 
heart, and perfect faith in goodness and 
beauty. That is the testimony of his poems. 
They do not strikingly evince the greatest 
of poetic faculties, imagination. They do 
not evince a controlling intellectual pur- 
pose. But they denote a character fraught 
with rare and lovable attributes, a fine intel- 



TRIBUTES. I»9 

lect touched with genius, and the poetic 
faculty guided by a true instinct of art. 

It is futile to conjecture what a man 
would have been, and what he would have 
done, under other circumstances than those 
which actually surrounded him . Yet I can- 
not but think, — remembering how much 
greater Arnold was than the writings that 
he left, — that under happier conditions he 
would have enriched the literature of his 
country with riper and better works. The 
reader will perceive in his poetry the ele- 
ments of fever and recklessness. He lived, 
ripened, and died within the brief period of 
thirty-one years. His lot was cast in a civ- 
ilisation, the enormous physical activity of 
which prevents repose and is an enemy to 
art. Moreover, the best years of his life, 
which were the latest, were the wild years 
of civil war, when poetic meditation was im- 
possible. His experience, it must be added, 
had deeply saddened him. He began life 
with exultant enthusiasm. He believed in 
everything, — in love, hope, ambition, pleas- 
ure, the rewards of success, and the prom- 
ises of fame. Love came to him, and 
sorrow followed in its train and a common 
grief broadened into a tragedy. At first he 
plunged into pleasure. Then came a mood 



I90 TRIBUTES. 

of apathy, in which he tired of everything. 
His lines entitled An Autobiography sug- 
gest this mood. Among the last words that 
he wrote are these, from the manuscript of 
his last McArone letter: "To sit in the 
chimney-corner and smoke a pipe, looking 
tranquilly backward upon all the troubles, 
trials, and tribulations, the losses, the dis- 
appointments, the doubtings and fearings, 
that make up the bitterness of life, — to 
look back upon these as things of the past, 
matters of history, already uninteresting to 
the present generation, is a boon I do 
mightily desire." In the gloom of these 
words his mood is displayed, a mood that 
could not, and did not, favour sustained ef- 
fort in literary art ; yet he wrote continu- 
ally, despite this apathy, and he never lost 
the poet's devotion to nature, nor the gen- 
tleman's sensibility, nor the thinker's ca- 
pacity to cope with the affairs of life. His 
sadness was for himself ; his cheerfulness 
for others. Those who met George Arnold 
saw a handsome, merry creature, whose 
blue eyes sparkled with mirth, whose voice 
was cheerful, whose manners were buoyant 
and winning, whose courtesy was free and 
gay. He had a smile and a kind word for 
everybody. He saw the best side of all per- 



TRIBUTES. 191 

sons. His large humanity was quick to 
find excuses for the errors and the faults of 
others. He could throw himself with hearty 
zest into the pleasures of the passing hour, 
and thus, wherever he went, he attracted 
friends. Among men of letters his presence 
was sunshine. He mingled with many 
classes of persons, and he was a favourite 
with all. Upon the minds of conventional 
people, indeed, he left an erroneous impres- 
sion, for he was impatient of the common- 
place, and he was proficient in the art of 
playful banter. But his nature was good, 
and the current of his life sparkled with 
graces as it flowed onward from light to 
darkness. 

Many pictures of him rise, as I think of 
pleasant hours passed in his society, in years 
that are gone, — of long rambles by day, and 
sad or merry talk by night, in pleasant lodg- 
ings where we dwelt together. His affec- 
tionate sympathy, his quaint cynicism, his 
wit, and his humorous philosophy were, at 
such times, inexpressibly winning. He had 
read many books, but he had studied man 
and nature with deeper interest, and his 
conversation was vital and various with the 
fruits of observation rather than reading. 
But no personal reminiscence, no tender, 



I92 TRIBUTES. 

regretful word, can reanimate his silent 
face or rekindle his " spell o'er hearts." 
In the love of his friends he can live for 
only them. For others he must live in his 
writings, if at all. 

" Thy leaf has perished in the green: 

And, while we breathe beneath the sun, 
The world, which credits what is done, 
Is cold to all that might have been." 

He was a writer from the first. While a 
hoy he amused himself toy making little 
newspapers and printing them with his pen. 
Several years later he began to keep a ver- 
sified Diary, in that Italian stanza which 
probably Byron's Beppo, in imitation of 
Whistlecraft, had commended to his fancy. 
That Diary he kept for a long time, so that 
it filled a large volume, but ultimately, and 
no doubt wisely, he destroyed it. In letters 
to his friends, also, which he ornamented 
with illustrative drawings, his literary fac- 
ulty was exercised. About the year 1853 
he drifted from painting to literature. 
There were fewer periodicals published in 
New York then than there are now, and 
fewer opportunities were afforded to writers, 
yet he was soon actively employed as the 
sub-editor of a story paper and as long 



TRIBUTES. 193 

as he remained in that office he was effi- 
cient and successful ; but his taste soon 
impelled him to decline editorial cares, and 
from that time he seldom undertook labours 
that could fetter his personal freedom. He 
could work in an orderly manner and with 
incessant industry, but he preferred to work 
whenever and wherever impulse directed 
him. In that way he became a contributor 
to many publications. His writings, col- 
lected by me, have been drawn from twenty- 
seven periodicals. He preserved printed 
copies of some of them, but in general he 
was careless of their fate. The collection 
of his stories, still unpublished, numbers 
one hundred and ninety-four, and it is 
incomplete. To assemble all his essays, 
sketches, reviews, and paragraphs would 
be impossible, they are so numerous and 
so widely scattered. Many a bright article 
that has anonymously gone the rounds of 
the press, pleasing hundreds of readers, 
came from his pen, — carelessly sold, to 
supply the need of the moment, and then 
forgotten. In the prominent magazines of 
America he is represented by only a few 
poems and stories. He was not fastidious 
as to the sale of Lis writings ; the nearest 
purchaser satisfied him. He sometimes 



194 TRIBUTES. 

gave poems to editors who were his personal 
friends. He was not a voluminous writer 
of serious verse, but his comic verses are 
numerous. At an early period he began to 
write for the comic papers, and he continued 
to work in that vein to the last. Vanity 
Fair, which was started in New York in 
the autumn of 1859, by Mr. W. A. Stephens, 
gave him constant employment. That paper 
was discontinued in the summer of 1863, 
and later its record of contributors and con- 
tributions was in part destroyed, so that a 
complete list of the articles that Arnold 
wrote for it cannot be obtained ; but it is 
certain that he contributed several hundred 
articles, in prose and verse, many of which 
he illustrated with pen-and-ink sketches. 
For Mrs. Grundy, started, in New York, 
by Dr. Alfred L. Carroll, in July, 1865, and 
discontinued after the publication of twelve 
numbers, he wrote twenty-nine articles, and 
made many drawings. His best known 
efforts in comic writing were his McArone 
Papers, which include a comic novel, in ten 
chapters. He used the pen-names of " Gra- 
hame Allen," "George Garrulous," "Pier- 
rot," and " The Undersigned." 

The humorous and satirical poems of 
Arnold that have been collected are mainly 



TRIBUTES. I95 

those which possess a general rather than a 
local interest. He wrote many clever verses 
in satire of passing events, but since the 
events have been forgotten the verses would 
appear to be pointless. The collection of 
his serious poems includes several which I 
was not able to obtain, prior to the publica- 
tion of Drift, and also several which, at 
first, I hesitated to print. It is easy to pub- 
lish ; it is hard to recall. My design was 
that a genius prematurely blighted should 
express itself in careless suggestion as well 
as in rounded and finished works of art. 
The fact that Arnold died young seemed to 
justify the preservation of some pieces which 
might properly have been rejected had his 
powers attained their full maturity. The 
fruits of a poetic mind that is early extin- 
guished by death are entitled to considera- 
tion not only as works of art but as relics. 



I96 TRIBUTES. 



Fitz- James O'Brien. 

1881. 

The facts of a man's life that can be 
recorded when he is gone, as a rule, hut 
poorly convey an adequate idea of what 
his life really was. This imperfect biog- 
raphy is, nevertheless, as nearly complete 
as careful research can make it. The more 
important part of the life of its subject was 
his intellectual experience. The history of 
his mind must be sought in his works. 

Fitz-James O'Brien was bOrn in Limer- 
ick County, Ireland, about the year 1828. 
His father was an attorney. His mother is 
said to have been a lady of remarkable 
beauty. He was educated at Dublin Uni- 
versity, but he was not trained to any 
profession, and it is remembered that he 
claimed to have been, in youth, a soldier 
in the British service. He early evinced 
a faculty for writing verses, and among 
his first compositions are two poems en- 
titled Loch hie and Irish Castles, which 



TRIBUTES. 197 

appear, without an author's name, in The 
Ballads of Ireland, collected and edited by 
Edward Hayes, 1856. On leaving college 
he went to London, where, in about two 
years, he spent a considerable inheritance. 
In 1851, according to a dubious report, he 
edited, in London, a periodical devoted to 
the World's Fair. Late in that year, or 
early in 1852, he resolved to seek his fort- 
une in America. One of his friends, Dr. 
Collins, brother to the Roman Catholic 
bishop of Cloyne, obtained for him letters 
of introduction from Dr. R. Shelton Mac- 
kenzie, then editor of a newspaper in Liv- 
erpool and correspondent for the New York 
Evening Star, addressed to Major Noah, 
General George P. Morris, and other prom- 
inent citizens of New York. On his arri- 
val the adventurous young writer made an 
auspicious entrance into New York society, 
and it was not long before his brilliant 
abilities were recognised* and he became 
a favourite. In that way began his Ameri- 
can career, which was destined to be sig- 
nalised by some of the most original poems 
and stories in the literature of his time, to 
flow through painful vicissitudes and much 
trouble, and to end in a soldier's grave. 
O'Brien's literary life was not more 



I98 TRIBUTES. 

eventful than such lives usually are, — ex- 
cept that it was, perhaps, more irregular 
and more surprisingly productive. His 
earliest writings were published by the 
comedian John Brougham, in a paper 
called the Lantern. " When I first knew 
him," said his old comrade, Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich, " he was trimming the wick of the 
Lantern, which went out shortly after- 
ward." In that paper appeared his touch- 
ing poem, An Old Story, The Ballad of Sir 
Brown, The Gory Gnome, and The Wonder- 
ful Adventures of Mr. Papplewick. At one 
of Brougham's dinners, in Windust's res- 
taurant, near the old Park theatre, — feasts 
at which the writers and artists of his Lan- 
tern were periodically convened, and at 
which everything except their paper was 
discussed, — O'Brien made the acquaint- 
ance of the artist and author, Frank H. 
Bellew, who became one of his intimate 
friends. The New York residences, in 
those days, were much further south in 
the city than they are now, and O'Brien 
and Bellew at one time lodged together in 
Leonard street, and subsequently in Broad- 
way, opposite to the Metropolitan Hotel, 
and on the site of the building afterward 
locally famous as Stanwix Hall. That was 



TRIBUTES. I99 

the season of the light heart and the foam- 
ing flagon, when the chimes are heard at 
midnight, and the bloom is on the rye. 
O'Brien's associations then were with the 
circles that eddied aronnd N. P. Willis and 
G. P. Morris, and at that time he wrote 
sketches and verses for their Home Jour- 
nal. His poem, which I have named The 
Demon of the Gibbet, first appeared in that 
paper under the inexpressive title of What 
Befell. He contributed, also, in a fitful 
way, to the Evening Post and to the New 
York Times, and he wrote for the Ameri- 
can Wliig Beview his Fragments from an 
Unpublished Magazine. He was a literary 
soldier of fortune, and, with expensive 
tastes and habits of extravagance, he found 
Grub street a weary road. 

The most important literary association 
that O'Brien ever formed was that which 
made him a regular contributor to Har- 
per's Magazine. His first paper in that 
periodical appeared in February, 1853, is 
called The Two Skulls, and is scientific 
and philosophical. He contributed to fifty- 
two numbers, and there are sixty-six of his 
productions in that magazine. His pen ap- 
pears to have been especially prolific during 
1855, 1856, and 1857. His last paper in 



200 TRIBUTES. 

Harper, a story entitled How I overcame 
my Gravity, was not published till May, 
1864, more than two years after he was 
dead. He never saw in print, either, for 
they also were posthumous publications, 
his story of Tommatoo and his poem of 
Down in the Glen at Idlewild. He wrote 
copiously for Harper's Weekly, as well as 
for the Magazine. His Ode on Kane was 
first printed in that journal, and there like- 
wise first appeared his fanciful, picturesque 
poem of The Zouaves, — a work which con- 
spicuously illustrates his remarkable faculty 
for giving an imaginative application to a 
topic of the passing hour. He wrote stories 
for Harper's Weekly, and he wrote a series 
of familiar letters called The Man about 
Town, which, even now, can be read with 
pleasure, for the liveliness of their spirit 
and the grace of their style. All this 
while he was writing, as capricious fancy 
prompted, or as the spur of necessity com- 
pelled, in other quarters. The veteran 
actor James W. Wallack was one of his 
best friends, and for Wallack's theatre he 
wrote several bright pieces, spirited, im- 
petuous, and polished, which were acted 
well, and which found a ready acceptance. 
One of them, A Gentleman from Ireland, 



TRIBUTES. 201 

still keeps the stage, and is still found ser- 
viceable to the dashing light comedian. 
For Laura Keene's theatre, at the sug- 
gestion of Mr. Jefferson, then its stage 
manager and principal actor, he adapted 
one of Brough's burlesques, and that piece, 
under the title of The Tycoon, was pro- 
duced during the visit of the first Japan- 
ese . embassy to America in 1859-1860. 
O'Brien possessed dramatic instinct, and 
in his London days he had obtained a 
good knowledge of the stage, and although 
he pushed the theory of "natural" acting 
too far, as may be seen in his tale of Mother 
of Pearl, he could write with judgment 
and taste on the acted drama. He did so, 
in the autumn of 1858, in the New York 
Saturday Press : one of his dramatic ar- 
ticles in particular — a disquisition on Ham- 
let, with Barry Sullivan as the Dane — is 
remarkable for intelligence, acute analysis, 
and good description. To Putnam's Mag- 
azine — that noble monument to the taste of 
George William Curtis — he was a contrib- 
utor, for several years. He was a diligent 
writer for Vanity Fair, and in the spark- 
ling columns of that paper were printed 
his grisly fancy of The Wharf Bat, his so- 
norous Song of the Locomotive, and his idyl 



202 TRIBUTES. 

of Strawberries. Two of his most remark- 
able stories, The Diamond Lens and The 
Wondersmith, were published in the Atlan- 
tic Monthly, in January, 1858, and Octo- 
ber, 1859, and of those tales it may be said 
that they set up a model of excellence which 
has made magazine literature better than 
it had been, in America, before they were 
printed. 

O'Brien much admired the strange, wild, 
passionate genius of Matilda Heron, and he 
once travelled as a literary aid with H. L. 
Bateman, that genial Boanerges of mana- 
gers, on a professional tour with that actress. 
Miss Heron was acting in Camille, and 
in a drama, by Mrs. Bateman, entitled 
Geraldine. O'Brien visited Boston, and 
remained for some time in that city, and 
he astonished some of its decorous literary 
circles by his irreverence for literary mag- 
nates whom it was then customary to wor- 
ship. It was then that I first met him 
and first observed the stalwart mind and 
formidable frankness for which he was 
remarkable. He was considerably changed 
from what he had been when he came to 
America. Mental toil and bodily privation, 
the hardships of a gypsy life, the reaction- 
ary sense of being in false positions and of 



TRIBUTES. 203 

being misunderstood, — which may embit- 
ter amiability and turn it to proud defi- 
ance, — had done their work upon him, 
and made him, in some of his moods, as 
lawless, arrogant, and truculent, as, in 
others, he was gentle, affectionate, and 
almost forlorn. In his face and manner 
there was the splendid freedom of the 
wild woods, yet at times there came into 
his eyes an indescribable light of danger- 
ous, half -slumbering wrath, — as of a soul 
that was a hunted vagabond, standing 
sentinel over its own desolation. I was 
attracted toward him, and we became com- 
rades, and so remained to the end. I have 
heard that when he first established his 
home in New York he dwelt in comfort- 
able quarters, surrounded with luxury ; 
that his raiment was superb ; his library 
excellent ; his furniture tasteful ; and that, 
like De Mauprat in the play, he was 
"splendid in banquets." His appearance 
in those days, before his nose had been 
broken, June, 1858, by the blow of a pugi- 
list, was unusually attractive. He had a 
fair complexion and waving brown hair; 
his eyes were gray-blue, large, brilliant, 
and expressive ; his smile was honest ; his 
countenance was frank and winning ; he 



204 TRIBUTES. 

was of the middle stature, of an athletic 
build, and he moved with negligent grace. 
His voice was rich, loud, and clear, and he 
had a bluff, breezy manner of speech, tend- 
ing to a joyous turbulence. In a general 
way he retained those characteristics, but 
at the time of our companionship he had 
emerged from his condition of prosperity, 
and his fortunes were low. He had noth- 
ing, he was at variance with many old 
acquaintances, his face had suffered dis- 
figurement, he lived nowhere, and he was 
well acquainted with hard times. I found 
him, in those gypsy days, a most interest- 
ing associate. His animal spirits were 
prodigious. His literary invention was 
sprightly, vigorous, and almost incessant. 
His enjoyment of the passing hour was so 
keen that it gave a zest to the enjoyment 
of all around him. No matter how hard 
poverty might pinch, or how dark the 
clouds might lower over the future, the 
laugh of O'Brien blew care away from 
the cup of life, as the foam is blown from 
the white-caps of the sea. 

O'Brien's habits of literary composition 
were erratic. A man less buoyant than he 
would have been dismayed by the hard- 
ships with which he was encompassed. 



TRIBUTES. 205 

But whether in calm or tempest he was 
always seeing, always thinking, always at 
work. He liked best to drift in the sun- 
shine and to he merry with genial com- 
panions, but he could nerve himself to 
effort, when occasion demanded it, and he 
could perform heavy tasks with amazing 
celerity. Times of indolence and times of 
exertion checkered his life, along the whole 
of its course. He was not naturally fluent, 
because he thought deeply, and wrote logi- 
cally, and was fastidious in taste, but his 
creative literary faculty was strong and 
his feeling was earnest. He possessed re- 
sources of literary art, his mind was replete 
with the reading it had absorbed in hours 
of apparent idleness, and he worked with 
purpose and zeal. He could accomplish 
a formidable task in a surprisingly short 
time, presenting his work rounded and fin- 
ished, as if with the scrupulous labour of 
many days. His poem of A Fallen Star 
was written in my lodging, between mid- 
night and morning ; he left the original 
draft upon the table, having made a clean 
copy of it for the press, and that manu- 
script strikingly indicates the care with 
which he wrote. His poem of The Sewing 
Bird was written in my lodging, in the 



206 TRIBUTES. 

course of two nights, and I have kept the 
pen with which it was written, as a relic 
of a remarkably expeditious effort. I never 
saw him so deeply depressed as he was 
then, for he was destitute and hungry ; 
and whenever that was his case he would 
not share with a comrade, and even when 
food was left in his way he would not take 
it. He sold The Sewing Bird for one hun- 
dred dollars, and a few hours later he was 
as merry as a brook in springtime. One 
of his favourite haunts was the old Hone 
house, in Broadway, at the southeast cor- 
ner of Great Jones street [long since de- 
molished], and there, under similar cir- 
cumstances, in one evening, he wrote the 
fine poem of The Lost Steamship. His 
story of What Was It f was written in the 
lodging of T. B. Aldrich, in Clinton place. 
These details are trivial, but they help to 
give a picture of his character and life. 

The burden laid upon a poet is, that he 
must feel and express the elemental pas- 
sions of humanity, yet never lapse from 
the perfect poise of a sane and decorous 
life ; and, being only a man, he usually 
falls short of his duty. Yet he still strives 
upward ; still obeys his fate ; still tries to 
utter the voice of the universal heart : and 



TRIBUTES. 207 

still, amid the flying echoes of his celestial 
music, he sometimes strays into sin and 
sorrow, faints and falters by the way, and 
drops into a lamentable grave. O'Brien 
was not more successful than some others 
of his kind. He was far from being per- 
fect. He was not deficient in moral sense. 
On the contrary, his perception of right 
and wrong was uncommonly keen ; but he 
was deficient in moral courage and stability 
of principle. The original nobility of his 
moral nature had been marred, though not 
spoiled, by conviviality and chronic reck- 
lessness. His conduct was not intention- 
ally wrong, but it was sometimes marked 
by heedless irregularity as to the ordinary 
duties of life, — a defect which, to some 
persons, is almost as culpable as bad inten- 
tion. He knew this, and his knowledge 
of it enraged him against himself. He was 
at times haughty and combative, partly 
because he was an Irishman, and partly 
because of his resentful conviction that 
he deserved, — by virtue of his powers, 
his achievements, and the possibilities of 
his mind and future, — a higher position in 
letters than had been accorded to him. But, 
so far as I could learn, his faults and errors 
did serious injury to no one but himself, 



208 TRIBUTES. 

while for the creation of literature he was 
a magnificent instrument. There was such 
a breezy audacity in his genius that, think- 
ing of him after all these years, I feel a 
thrill of careless joy, as if youth were come 
back. He was like a giant oak, responsive 
to the midnight gale and exultant in its 
rage. He was like the ocean swept by the 
tempest, that answers with clarion tumult 
and savage delight. He never paltered with 
life, nor fawned on the many self-consti- 
tuted potentates with whom the avenues of 
society are largely occupied. He did not 
approach literature with timid deprecation, 
but he fronted the ordeal royally, and he 
proved equal to it. He spoke his thought, 
and he neither valued life nor feared death. 
Thus constituted, — sensitive to the grand 
influence of nature and the tender touch of 
art, — the mystic spirit that is in creation 
could play upon him at will, and sound 
what stops it pleased. Time would have 
improved that organ of the Muse ; would 
have broadened and mellowed its tones, 
and made it vocal with more heavenly emo- 
tion. The noble instrument was too soon 
broken ; the life that promised so much 
was too soon palled in the darkness of the 
grave. Nevertheless, in what was uttered, 



TRIBUTES. 209 

there lives a buoyant power and a soul of 
beauty. Garnered in O'Brien's pages there 
are rich creations of imagination, splendid 
or sombre pictures, original conceptions of 
character, rare bits of description, fine 
strokes of analysis, paeans of joy, and 
wails of grief. Those pages are the elo- 
quent manifestation of a rich mind, 
broad in scope, adequate in strength, 
gentle and human in influence. Such 
works are the best interpreters of their 
beneficence. There is no limit to the good 
that literature accomplishes when, through 
the ministration of beauty, it helps to free 
our souls from the hard conditions — strug- 
gle, loss, and suffering — under which life is 
given to the human race. 

Shelton Mackenzie, now dead, in a gra- 
cious letter responsive to inquiries of mine, 
referred to O'Brien's death in these words: 
"To die on the field of honour, under the 
flag of his adopted country, was just the 
doom his gallant spirit would have craved." 
It was the doom reserved for him, and he 
met it well. He was a lover of liberty, and 
a stanch advocate of union in the Ameri- 
can Republic. When the Civil War began, 
in 1861, he joined the Seventh Regiment of 
the National Guard of New York, in the 



2IO TRIBUTES. 

hope of being sent to the front, and he was 
in camp with that regiment, at Washington, 
for six weeks, ' ' A brilliant, dashing fel- 
low," wrote Colonel Emmons Clark ; " very- 
brave, and a universal favourite. He never, 
in any way, did anything to hurt the good 
name of the regiment. He held the rank 
of Captain, and is so entered on our regi- 
mental roll of honour. ' ' When the Seventh 
came home he left it, and for a time he was 
engaged in gathering recruits for a volun- 
teer regiment, to be called the McClellan 
Rifles. He subsequently received an ap- 
pointment on the staff of General Lander, 1 

1 There is but a meagre, imperfect record at the 
War Department in Washington, a strictly official one 
and correct as far as it goes, of O'Brien's military 
career. Thomas Bailey Aldrich and O'Brien applied, at 
nearly the same time, for a place on General Lander's 
staff. The application of Aldrich, an old friend of 
General Lander, was a little before that of O'Brien. 
General Lander sent a telegram to Aldrich, at Ports-' 
month, New Hampshire, offering to him a staff ap- 
pointment, with the rank of lieutenant. In the mean- 
time Aldrich had left Portsmouth, and the telegram 
remained there, unopened and unknown to him. Gen- 
eral Lander, receiving no answer from Aldrich, gave 
the post to O'Brien, who shortly afterward was killed. 
Old Henry Clapp used to say that "Aldrich was shot 
in O'Brien's shoulder." 

That O'Brien received the appointment is certain, 
but, being already in the field, he was not formally 



TRIBUTES. 211 

and at once went to the scene of conflict 
in Virginia. His period of active military 
service was brief, but he distinguished him- 

mustered in, and he was killed before his commission 
had been signed : hence the meagre official record at 
the War Department. 

Writing from Camp Kelly, Virginia, January 21, 
1862, to his friend, Mr. Thomas E. Davis, O'Brien 
said : " I am in harness, and am staff officer of parade, 
and am already entrusted with the rather arduous but 
important duty of posting the pickets all through this 
devil of a wilderness. Address to me always as A.D.C., 
General Lander's Brigade." 

" My impression is " — so General McClellan wrote 
to me — "that Mr. O'Brien served with Lander as a 
volunteer aid." 

In the absence of a regular commission that would 
have been his rank. He gave his life without price. 

In the New American Cyclopcedia, volume for 
1862, page 543, occurs this reference to an exploit at 
Bloomery Gap in which O'Brien participated : " In 
this brilliant dash the Confederate commander and his 
staff surrendered to General Lander, who, with a sin- 
gle Aid, had outridden the rest of the force, and, com- 
ing upon them at full gallop, demanded their swords." 
The " single Aid " was O'Brien. 

The body of O'Brien was, at first, placed in the 
receiving tomb at Greenwood, but on November 27, 
1874, it was removed and buried in the earth. His 
grave is number 1183, in lot 17,263, in that cemetery. 
At the funeral of O'Brien, Frank Wood. T. B. Aldrich, 
Edward F. Mullen, the quaint artist of Vanity Fair, 
and the writer of this sketch rode in a coach together, 
and Wood carried O'Brien's sword. Mullen and 
"Wood have since died. • 



212 - TRIBUTES. 

self by energy and valour. On February 
26, 1862, in a skirmish with the Confeder- 
ate Colonel Ashley's cavalry, he was shot, 
and severely wounded, and he lingered till 
April 6, dying on that day, at Cumberland, 
Virginia. 

The last time I saw O'Brien in life he 
was going to the front. The next time I 
saw him he was in his coffin. The silver 
cord had been loosed, and the stormy heart 
of the poet-soldier was at rest. 'Even in 
death his countenance wore its old expres- 
sion of defiant endurance. His funeral 
occurred in the armoury of the Seventh 
Kegiment. The silver-haired Wallack, lean- 
ing on his son Lester's arm, his pale, hand- 
some face wet with tears, stood beside the 
coffin, and round them were clustered many 
of O'Brien's comrades, now likewise dead 
and gone. With muffled drums and mar- 
tial dirges we bore him to Greenwood, and 
there a guard of honour fired a volley over 
his tomb, and, with a few flowers from the 
loving hand of Matilda Heron, we left him 
forever. There his ashes still rest, and 
there, in time to come, the pilgrim — if 
such there be — to the shrine of genius and 
valour, will place the chaplet of remem- 
brance on his grave. 



TRIBUTES. 213 



Charles Dawson Shanly. 

Charles Dawson Shanly, who died at 
Jacksonville, Florida, April 15, 1875, was 
known as a companionable, humorous, and 
quaint writer, but his excellence in letters 
fades from memory, in comparison with his 
worth as a man. Nobility of character, in- 
tegrity of conduct, fidelity to duty, cheerful 
submission to fate, sweetness of tempera- 
ment, and modesty of bearing are rarer 
virtues than intellectual brilliancy, and they 
were all combined in him. He lived in 
New York, working with his pen, for about 
eighteen years, and to all with whom he 
came into contact he was conspicuous as a 
type of the ideal gentleman. His life was 
lonely. His mind seemed to have been 
early saddened, though not embittered. 
He was a kind, thoughtful man, who worked 
hard, accomplished much, did all the good 
that he could find to do, and never spoke 
about himself or his labours. His fortunes 
were precarious ; he was acquainted with 
hardship ; but, whether in shadow or sun- 



214 TRIBUTES. 

shine, his mind remained equable and pa- 
tient, and his industry and probity were 
undisturbed. There were not many persons 
who saw and appreciated his example. The 
more showy and pretentious author captures 
the crowd. But those who did understand 
that example found comfort and strength 
in it, and they remember it with love. 

Shanly wrote essays and descriptive 
articles, in the Atlantic Monthly, many 
poems and ballads, — some of which are 
imaginative and pathetic, while some are 
satirical or humorous, — and many miscel- 
laneous articles in newspapers. He was, in 
1860, one of the chief contributors to Vanity 
Fair, and he subsequently became its 
editor. He was also the editor of Mrs. 
Grundy, and he was a contributor to The 
New York Leader, for which, as afterward 
for The New York Weekly Beview, and, 
during a short time, for The New York 
Albion, he wrote reviews of pictures. He 
was fond of painting, and he was an expert 
draughtsman, especially in the line of comic 
sketches. One of his characteristic draw- 
ings, published long ago in Punch, repre- 
sents, with comic effect, the discomfiture, of 
a stout old Englishman, who, at a private 
museum, has mistaken a horned owl for 



TRIBUTES. 215 

a stuffed cat, and has got his "bald head 
scratched by the angry bird. He excelled 
as a writer of poems of dramatic incident or 
of representative mood. The Brier- Wood 
Pipe, which met with much favour during 
the Civil War, was written by him, and so 
was the weird ballad of TJie Walker of the 
Snow. Another unique piece was his start- 
ling poem, — which is picture and poem in 
one, — Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shot — 
first published in London, in Once a Week. 

Shanly did not accomplish enough in the 
poetic vein to win for himself a high and 
permanent rank, but his name is entitled to 
a place in every representative collection of 
American poetry. He was not indeed an 
American by birth, but America was the 
land of his choice and his labours, and in 
America he would have wished to be re- 
membered. He was an Irish gentleman, of 
old and honourable family. He was born 
in Dublin, in 1811, and he was educated at 
Trinity College, in that city. He lived in 
England, and also in Canada, before mak- 
ing his home in New York. He was of 
a hardy constitution, having blue eyes, 
iron-gray hair, a weather-beaten face, and 
a slender, wiry figure. He was well ac- 
quainted with animals and field sports, 



2l6 TRIBUTES. 

and he vas an expert walker. During 
the last two years of his life he seemed 
to waste slowly away, but his illness, like 
all else that was painful and sad in his life, 
he kept to himself. He knew that he was 
going to his death, and he had prepared 
himself, with humbleness and submission, 
for the inexorable change. There is no 
busy worker in the arts that may not be 
benefited by reflection upon a character so 
pure and simple, a life so useful and blame- 
less, and an end so full of peace. 



TRIBUTES. 217 



Bufus Choate. 

No man made a deeper impression upon 
the best intellect of his time than was made 
by Eufus Choate. Nearly fifty years have 
passed since he died, and but few of his 
contemporaries survive ; yet the tradition of 
his original character, his poetic genius, his 
unique personality, and his wonderful elo- 
quence has never faded. The court-room 
was his chief arena, and many of his great 
feats of oratory — which, at times, were 
brilliant beyond description — were there 
performed. His life was mainly devoted to 
the law ; but he frequently spoke on literary 
subjects, and he delivered speeches in Con- 
gress, and orations on many memorable pub- 
lic occasions. One of the most splendid ex- 
amples of eloquence that have been recorded 
was his speech in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 
1856, prophetically announcing the approach 
of the Civil War. He was, in politics, a 
Whig and a Protectionist, and he was a 
follower of Daniel Webster, a Unionist, and 
a conscientious patriot. In oratory he was 



2l8 TRIBUTES. 

the disciple of Cicero and Burke, — "but he 
had a character and a style entirely his own, 
not seen in any other man, before or since. 
As a jurist he was eminent among the best. 
As a scholar, in the ancient languages and 
in literature, he had few equals. In religion 
he was a Presbyterian. His temperament 
was sweet, gentle, and charming. He dif- 
fused happiness in private life, and in his 
public career he was a noble example. 

The good intellectual habit of judging 
intellectual men abstractly without regard 
to their identification with popular move- 
ments and commonly accepted ideas, has 
been steadily winning its way ; but it was 
not widely predominant years ago. During 
the latter part of Choate's life, and at the 
time of his death, detraction — always busy 
with shining names — was audible in his 
disfavour. One of the bitterest attacks ever 
made upon genius and virtue was made in 
an article on Choate, written by the Kev. 
Moncure D. Conway, in a magazine called 
The Dial, in 1860. The same intolerance 
which, in earlier times, had mobbed William 
Lloyd Garrison in Boston, —the pendulum 
of public feeling having, meanwhile, swung 
to the other extreme, — was eager to vent 
itself upon all conservatives and friends of 



TRIBUTES. 219 

compromise. Choate, who believed that the 
slavery question, and all other questions, 
could be settled without a war, and who 
wished to preserve the Union without the 
shedding of blood, had, in a letter to the 
Whigs of Maine, referred to " the sounding 
and glittering generalities of the Declaration 
of Independence," and he had voted for 
Buchanan as President. That was sufficient. 
To talk of the Constitution was to outrage 
" the higher law " and to loosen the stoppers 
in all the vials of partisan wrath. Webster, 
dying in 1852, had passed away in retire- 
ment and in considerable disfavour. Choate, 
Everett, Winthrop, Fillmore, Cushing, and 
other men of a like political persuasion, 
whether Democrat or Whig, who set them- 
selves against the current of opinion, shared 
in the popular obloquy. Against Choate the 
censure of the time directed itself toward 
three points. He was declared to be the 
advocate of slavery; he was denounced as 
a lawyer who, by specious beguilement of 
juries, had made it safe to murder, and who 
was therefore an enemy to civilised society; 
and, since it could not be denied that he 
was brilliant, detraction freely affirmed that 
he was shallow. C n each point his censors 
were wrong. He did not believe in slavery, 



220 TRIBUTES. 

but lie believed that the disease could be 
extirpated without war, and he thought that 
if the sword were once drawn the Republic 
would perish. As a lawyer he always did 
the utmost that he could do, for his client, — 
which is admittedly a lawyer's duty; but 
nobody now says that he ever went beyond 
the line of rectitude and honour. An advo- 
cate, even when he knows that his client is 
guilty, when once entered on the case, must 
continue to defend him. That rule was 
sanctioned by the court, in the famous case 
of Phillips and Courvousier. The partial 
acquittal that Choate obtained in the case 
of Tirrell was obtained not by eloquence 
or ingenuity, but by evidence, and by a 
plausible theory, urged with the sincerity of 
profound conviction. The advocate did not 
know, and did not believe, that his client 
was a wilful murderer. At a later time, in 
the case of Professor Webster, believing him 
to be guilty, he refused to undertake the 
defence. As to his learning, — the man 
whose legal lore and splendid command of 
positive knowledge had the admiration of 
such lawyers as Webster, Shaw, Washburn, 
Parsons, Lunt, Goodrich, and Bartlett, 
and whose classical scholarship delighted 
Edward Everett, can never have needed 



TRIBUTES. 221 

defence. Eeaders who remember Clioate 
and his times may smile to think of fighting 
the old battles over again, and once more 
slaying the slain. 

" Time is like the peacefulness of grass." 
Those old heroes are all beneath the sod. 
The nation has passed through her peril and 
agony, and is pressing onward. It is easy 
to be wise after the event. The observer 
can see now wherein men like Webster and 
Choate might have shown a larger wisdom 
and courage, — accepting, in the passionate 
impulse of a people, an admonition from the 
moral government of the world, and being 
content to act upon it, and leave the rest to 
Heaven. But the posture of their political 
opinions has long since ceased to be impor- 
tant. Their personality is now their value. 
They were great men, and their shining 
names are a rich legacy from the past. 
Posterity will honour them, not for what 
they at any time deemed expedient in policy, 
but for what they were, and for the great- 
ness of human nature that they embodied 
and avouched. In looking at the career of 
any man there is a disposition to look at its 
results ; but so much in human life is tem- 
porary and evanescent that the observer 
must, at last, look through the results rather 



222 TRIBUTES. 

than at them, and so derive enlightenment 
and strength from gazing at the soul itself. 
The outward and visible results of the life 
of Rufus Choate were disproportionate to 
his great powers and equipment and his 
strenuous, incessant toil. High as he rose, 
he never found a field that was broad enough 
for his genius, or an occasion to which he 
was not superior. To see him employed in 
a trial was, inevitably, to think of a trip- 
hammer employed to crack a nut. The law, 
as Hooker defined it and as Choate pursued 
it, is a noble profession, but it was not 
broad enough for him. There seemed to be, 
in his spirit, the faculties and resources that 
are, by common consent, ascribed to the 
great actor or the great poet ; yet he seemed 
not to heed them, not to value them, not 
indeed to value anything, — aside from living 
in the heat and splendour of a volcanic 
intellectual glow and the ecstasy of an ever- 
increasing communion with knowledge and 
beauty. 



TRIBUTES. 223 



Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

The death of Oliver Wendell Holmes 
(October 7, 1894), a natural event at his 
great age, but not the less a sorrowful be- 
reavement, was the extinction of one of 
the most remarkable men of this century. 
Holmes may have been, in the characteris- 
tics of humour and fastidious taste, a dis- 
ciple of the wits of the age of Queen Anne, 
but in the fibre of his intellect, — its calm 
courage, broad vision, ample equipment, 
and eager, joyous, sanguine vitality, — he 
was emphatically a man of the present day. 
He sympathised, to the fullest extent, with 
the march of thought, and in every direction 
of advance he stood in the front line. As 
a writer he ranged over many fields, and in 
all of them he manifested not only copious 
and various mental resources, but two of 
the greatest qualities that dignify the human 
mind and help the human race, — lucid per- 
ception and dauntless cheer. He knew the 
world as it is, and he was neither dismayed 
nor saddened. At all times and under all 



224 TRIBUTES. 

circumstances he spoke for the nobility that 
is in man and the spiritual grandeur to 
which man is naturally destined, and his 
voice always rang out, clearly and bravely, 
the inspiring watchwords of labour and 
hope. Whether in essay, novel, poem, 
treatise, history, or speech, his indomitable 
spirit was always present, and thus, while 
dispensing the force and beauty of thought, 
the pleasantness of mirth, and the gentle 
light of humour, he imparted the benefit 
that is needed most of all, — the blessing of 
strength. The reader of Holmes receives 
a continual impulse toward the steadfast, 
cheerful performance of duty; a continual 
incentive to unquestioning faith in the final 
prevalence of right ; and therefore the world 
is better and happier because he has lived 
in it. 

There will be discussion, as time passes, 
with reference to the rank of Holmes as a 
man of letters, but there will be no discus- 
sion as to the influence that he exercised ; 
and perhaps no question is of much prac- 
tical importance that can be raised concern- 
ing any writer who has helped his generation 
to bear its burdens and to do its appointed 
work. The literature that is permanently 
valuable to the world is that which tran- 



TRIBUTES. 225 

scends personal expression and enters into 
the general life. Holmes, by his Autocrat 
alone, reached thousands of minds, — filling 
them with liberal ideas and kindly views, 
stimulating their finer propensities, and 
gently prompting them to look at all things 
in a tolerant mood, to be merciful as well 
as just, and to lighten the toils and troubles 
of this transitory life with mirth and laugh- 
ter. In that respect he did not leave his 
place to be determined by controversy, but 
took it, and held it for himself. He was, 
most of all, a humorist ; and furthermore, 
which is exceptional and extraordinary, he 
was a humorist in a new vein ; for he did 
not stop at character and manners, but 
ranged through the whole wide realm of 
philosophy, and, with deep appreciation as 
well as lively fancy and genial pleasantry, 
played about the gravest subjects that can 
occupy the human mind. Reared in the 
intellectual period of Emerson, he felt, with 
that great spirit, that "the solar system is 
not sensitive to criticism," and having a 
spontaneous drift toward goodness and 
beauty, he neither darkened his vision, nor 
restrained his analytical faculties, nor put a 
curb upon his exuberant humour. His Auto- 
crat, therefore, is one of the most natural 



226 TRIBUTES. 

books ever written, — a book that teems 
with stimulative suggestion, and one that 
has helped, in a high degree, to emancipate 
the age from many fetters of bigotry, con- 
ventionality, and folly. 

Holmes valued his humorous writings less 
than he valued his poetry. It was as a poet 
that he chiefly desired recognition and re- 
membrance ; for he was aware that all his 
powers derived their vitality, lucidity, and 
harmony from the poetic principle that was 
at the basis of his mind. To how great an 
extent poetic emotion was controlled in him 
by his vigilant faculties of sense and humour, 
and by the circumstances of his conventional 
environment, it would not be easy to de- 
termine. That it was so controlled, and 
that he often felt it to be so, is manifest. 
No writer has suggested so pathetically the 
strains, surpassing all earthly music, that 
die away unheard in the viewless temple of 
the soul. The crowning excellence of his 
verse is felicity. He had inspiration, as 
when he wrote The Chambered Nautilus, 
Tlie Voiceless, The Iron Gate, Under the 
Violets, Martha, Nearing the Snow-Line, 
and that exquisite tribute to the memory of 
Thomas Moore, which is one of the best 
poems of occasion that ever were written, if 



TRIBUTES. 227 

not the very best. His inspiration, however, 
does not seem to have been constitutional. 
Perhaps he was more a poet by art than by 
nature. He possessed a prodigious moral 
fervour, combined with the torrid glow of a 
brilliant intellect and with great sensibility, 
and he was a supreme master of style. No 
man has ever spoken better the word that 
it was in him to speak. 

With the extinction of Holmes, almost 
the last of the literary lights of New England 
has disappeared. It was a noble group. 
Dana, Percival, Emerson, Hawthorne, Long- 
fellow, Whittier, Willis, Lowell, Curtis, and 
Holmes, — all sons of a Puritan common- 
wealth, all children of the Muses, all famous, 
and all at rest ! What a wealth of genius, 
of aspiration, of beautiful character, and of 
noble living those names denote ! and what 
a wonderful variety of faculties and achieve- 
ments ! In all the luminous circle there 
was no heart more true and tender than the 
heart that now is stilled forever ; no spirit 
so bright as the spirit that now has passed 
into that awful darkness and silence where 
only the eyes of love and hope can follow. 



228 TRIBUTES. 



Jefferson. 

Read at a Stage Festival in Honour of Joseph 
Jefferson, at the Garden Theatre, Nmo York, 
November 8, 1895, the reader being Agnes Booth, 
Mrs. John B. Sckoeffel. 

1. 

The songs that should greet him are songs 
of the mountain — 
No sigh of the pine-tree that murmurs 
and grieves, 
But the music of streams rushing swift 
from their fountain, 
And the soft gale of spring through the 
sun-spangled leaves. 



In the depth of the forest it woke from its 
slumbers — 
His genius that holds ev'ry heart in its 
thrall ! 
Beside the bright torrent he learned his 
first numbers — 
The thrush's sweet cadence, the meadow- 
. lark's call. 



TRIBUTES. 229 



O'er his cradle kind Nature — that Mother 
enchanted 
Of Beauty and Art — cast her mantle of 
grace ; 
In his eyes lit her passion, and deeply im- 
planted 
In his heart her strong love of the whole 
human race. 



Like the rainbow that pierces the clouds 
where they darken, 
He came, ev'ry sorrow and care to be- 
guile: 
He spoke, — and the busy throng halted to 
hearken ; 
He smiled, — and the world answered 
back with a smile. 



Like the sunburst of April, with mist drift- 
ing after, 
When in shy, woodland places the daisy 
uprears, 
He blessed ev'ry spirit with innocent laugh- 
ter, — 
The more precious because it was mingled 
with tears. 



230 TRIBUTES. 

6. 

Like the rose by the wayside, so simple and 
tender, 
His art was, — to win us because he was 
true : 
We thought not of greatness, or wisdom, 
or splendour — 
We loved him, and that was the whole 
that we knew ! 



He would heed the glad voice of the sum- 
mer leaves shaken 
By the gay wind of morning that sports 
through the trees ! 
Ah, how shall we bid that wild music 
awaken, 
And thrill to his heart, with such accents 
as these ? 



How utter the honour and love that we 
bear him, — 
The High Priest of Nature, the Master 
confest, — 
How proudly yet humbly revere, and de- 
clare him 
The Prince of his Order, the brightest 
and best ! 



TRIBUTES. 23I 



Ah, vain are all words ! But, as long as 
life's river 
Through sunshine and shadow rolls down 
to the sea ; 
While the waves dash in music forever and 
ever ; 
While clouds drift in glory, and sea-birds 
are free ; 

10. 

So long shall the light and the bloom and 
the gladness 
Of Nature's great heart his ordainment 
proclaim, 
And its one tender thought of bereavement 
and sadness 
Be the sunset of time over Jefferson's 
fame. 



Written at sea, aboard the steamship 
Xmo York, October 11, 1895. 



ON THE VEEGE. 



ON THE VERGE. 235 



XVIII. 

ON THE VERGE. 

OUT in the dark it throbs and glows — 
The wide, wild sea, that no man knows ! 
The wind is chill, the surge is white, 
And I must sail that sea to-night. 

You shall not sail I The breakers roar, 
On many a mile of iron shore, 
The waves are livid in their wrath, 
And no man knows the ocean path. 

I must not bide for wind or wave ; 
I must not heed, though tempests rave ; 
My course is set, my hour is known, 
And I must front the dark, alone. 

Your eyes are wild, your face is pale, — 
This is no night for ships to sail ! 
The hungry wind is moaning low, 
The storm is up — you shall not go ! 

'Tis not the moaning wind you hear — 
It is a sound more dread and drear, 
A voice that calls across the tide, 
A voice that will not be denied. 



236 ON THE VERGE. 

Tour words are faint, your brow is cold, 
Your looks grow sudden gray and old, 
The lights burn dim, the casements shake, — 
Ah, stay a little, for my sake ! 



Too late ! Too late ! The vow you said 
This many a year is cold and dead, * 
And through that darkness, grim and black, 
I shall but follow on its track. 

Bem.ember all fair things and good, 
That e'er were dreamed or understood, 
For they shall all the Past requite, 
So you but shun the sea to-night ! 

No more of dreams ! Nor let there be 
One tender thought of them or me — 
For on the way that I must wend 
I dread no harm and need no friend ! 

The golden shafts of sunset fall 
Athwart the gray cathedral wall, 
While o'er its tombs of old renown 
The rose-leaves softly flutter down. 

No thought of holy things can save 
One relic now from Mem'ry's grave, 
And be it sun or moon or star, 
The light that falls must follow far ! 



ON THE VERGE. 237 

I mind the ruined turrets bold, 
The ivy, flushed with sunset gold, 
The dew-drench" 1 d roses, in their sleep, 
That seemed to smile, and yet to weep. 

There'll be nor smile nor tear again ; 
There'll be the end of every pain ; 
There'll be no parting to deplore, 
Nor love nor sorrow any more. 

I see the sacred rivers flow, 
The barge in twilight drifting slow, 
While o'er the daisied meadow swells 
The music of the vesper bells. 

It is my knell — so far away ! 
The night wears on — I must not stay I 
My canvas strains before the gale — 
My cables part, and I must sail ! 



Loud roars the sea ! The dark has come 
He does not move — his lips are dumb. — 
Ah, God, receive, on shores of light, 
The shattered ship that sails to-night ! 



THE WORKS OF WILLIAM WINTER. 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. Library Edition. 
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Stoke Pogis and 


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Thomas Gray. 


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At the Grave of Cole- 


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8. First View of Strat- 


19. 


On Barnet Battle 


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Field. 


9. London Npoks and 


20. 


A Glimpse of Canter- 


Corners. 




bury. 


10. Relics of Lord Byron. 


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The Shrines of War- 


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A Borrower of the 


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roam among the shrines of the mother-land. Tempera- 
ment is the explanation of style; and he has written 
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beauty and his heart with mingled joy and sadness; 
and surely some memory of her venerable ruins, her 
ancient shrines, her rustic glens, her gleaming rivers, 
and her flower-spangled meadows will mingle with the 
last thoughts that glimmer through his brain when tire 
shadows of the eternal night are falling and the ramble 
of life is done." — From the Preface. 

" He offers something more than guidance to the 
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Historic Nooks and Corners. 

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Sir Walter Scott. 
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IV. A Stratford Chronicle. 
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VI. Beauties of France. 

VII. Ely and its Cathedral. 

VIII. From Edinburgh to Inverness. 

IX. The Field of Culloden. 

X. Stormbound Iona. 

SHRfNES OF LITERATURE. 
XL The Forest of Arden : As You Like It. 
XII. Fairy Land: A Midsummer Night's Dream, 

XIII. Will 0' the Wisp: Love's Labour Lost. 

XIV. Shakespeare's Shrew. 

XV. A Mad World: Antony and Cleopatra. 

XVI. Sheridan, and the School for Scandal. 

XVII. Farquhar, and the Inconstant. 

XVIII. Longfellow. 

XIX. A Thought on Cooper's Novels. 

XX. A Man of Letters: John R. G. Hassard. 

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Adelaide Neilson. 


17- 


Ada Rehan. 


4- 


Edwin Booth. 


18. 


Tennyson's Foresters 


5- 


Mary Anderson. 


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Ellen Terry; Mer- 


6. 


Olivia. 




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20. 


Richard Mansfield. 




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21. 


Genevieve Ward. 


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Edward S. Willard. 


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Jefferson and Florence. 


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Salvini. 


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On the Death of Flor- 


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Irving as Eugene 




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Aram. 


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Charles Fisher. 


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John McCullough. 


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Mrs. Gilbert. 


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Charlotte Cushman. 


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James Lewis. 


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Lawrence Barrett. 


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Irving in Ravenswood. 




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John Gilbert. 

7. Sketch of John 

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Woolfert's Roost and 
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Henry Irving and El- 
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Lawrence Barrett as 


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Mansfield's Dandies. 




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Charles Gayler. 


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Rossi as Hamlet. 




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Portia and Shylock. 


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Juliet. 


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Kendal. 


8. 


The Comedy of the 


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Claudian and Wilson 




Wonder. 




Barrett. 


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25. 


Character of Edwin 




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Booth. 


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London. 




Rosalind. 


ii. 


Ada Rehan in Old 


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Representative Amer- 


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Terry in Becket. 


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Wills's Play of Faust. 


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only as a tradition in the memory of those to 
whom it had immediately appealed. ' Shadows 
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" The writer, therefore, who, gifted with insight 
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these glimpses confined to theatrical life. Many of 
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